The Sword for its Sharpness
by Third Crow
Summary: What if, instead of Steve Rodgers, there was Stephanie Rodgers? A mostly canon-compliant story in which a female Captain America breaks hearts and saves lives.
1. Chapter 1

_I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only what they defend._

Faramir, Captain of Gondor, in _The Two Towers_ by J. R. R. Tolkien

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><p>Chapter 1 - 1928<p>

*Notes: This story has some differences from established MCU continuity - beyond the gender of Captain America, I mean. In this story, Stephanie is raised by her father - not her mother. Being raised by her father makes Stephanie more of an outsider in the 20's and 30's - as she had no one to teach her the cultural requirements of womanhood at the time, like coiffed hair and makeup. A small, sickly girl is less a target of scorn than a small, sickly boy - but a girl who likes Julius Caesar and wears pants would certainly attract some derision.

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><p>The other girls had cornered her on the way home from the library. This time, they grabbed her books and glasses - tossing them to each other and making her try to catch them until she started wheezing. When it was obvious she couldn't run anymore they threw her things into the alley and laughed - because how could she find her glasses without using her glasses? Everyone knew little Stephanie Rogers was blind as a bat without 'em.<p>

She was on her hands and knees in the alley, gently feeling around herself, her thoughts bouncing between _don't cry don't cry_ and _what did I just touch?! _- when she heard footsteps behind her.

Back for more, huh? Well, they wouldn't see her scared. She didn't even look around.

"What, no puppies to kick? Your life must be pretty darn boring if pestering me is the best you can do on Friday afternoon." She heard a chuckle. Was that good or bad? She kept going, happy that her voice was only shaking a little. "Maybe you should pick up a hobby, like reading. Oh wait...reading requires thinking. My mistake."

"I found your specs." A boy's voice. Stephanie turned around and squinted up at a blurry figure holding out a blurry hand bearing another blur that was presumably her glasses.

"...Thanks." She took them and put them on. _Not broken. That's a relief. _

The blur resolved itself into a rangy, dark-haired kid a little older than she was, maybe eleven, messy, rumpled, and sporting a faded black eye. Stephanie had seen him at school and around the block- typically either getting in fights with other boys, getting an earful from his mom, or getting sent to the principal's office.

"They were pretty dirty. I wiped 'em off for you." His shirt wasn't very clean either, which would explain why Stephanie now looked at the world through a smeary curtain of grime. "I tried to clean up your book too, but…" He shrugged. Stephanie saw that her book - her _library_ book - had clearly landed face down in a puddle. Its pages were already waterlogged and wrinkling.

With an inarticulate cry of dismay, Stephanie snatched the book from the boy's hands and cradled it as if it were an injured kitten. Her lower lip began to quiver.

"Aw, jeez," he said, "Look, don't cry; I'm sure we can dry it out with a hair dryer or something…"

"I wasn't going to cry," Stephanie lied. "Your ma has a hair dryer?"

"Why shouldn't she?" The boy said sharply. His father was gone, but not dead, and defending his mother was the cause of most of his schoolyard scraps. Stephanie's lip began to tremble again. "Shucks, I'm sorry. Look, why don't you come by and we'll try it out."

The boy lived just down the block from Stephanie, and on the way to his house he told her his name was James Buchanan Barnes - saying the name as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. "Just call me Bucky."

"Stevie Rogers," said Stephanie.

Mrs. Barnes - pleasantly surprised that her son was back before dark, without any new bruises, and wanting to pass the afternoon doing something involving a book - loaned her hair dryer to the cause without complaint, and even brought in some peanut butter sandwiches after a few minutes.

"Are you sure this will work?" Stevie was propping up the book while Bucky aimed the hair dryer at it with one hand and shoved a sandwich into his mouth with the other.

"Sure, why not?" He said, spraying crumbs. "It works on hair, right? Hey, what's the big to-do about this book, anyway? Looks like a real snooze from where I'm sitting."

"It is not!" Stevie said, offended. "It's a biography of Alexander the Great - the greatest general and military strategist of all time! He conquered the entire known world! Well, what was known at the time...not America or Africa."

"Really? Then why haven't I ever heard of him?"

Stevie glared. "Maybe you would have if you spent more time in class."

"Ouch!" Bucky put his hand to his chest melodramatically, as if she had shot him. "What'd he do, if he was so amazing?"

Stevie pushed up her glasses. "Alright. When Alexander was conquering Persia he came to a fort called the Sogdian Rock…"

Bucky snickered. "The soggy rock?"

"Be quiet! I'm telling the story! Anyway, it was a fort on a cliff - a sheer, steep cliff - that had never been taken in battle, so when Alexander asked the general to surrender, he laughed and said Alexander would need men with wings to capture the Rock."

Stevie's face shone with animation. Bucky found he was leaning forward, eager in spite of himself to find out what happened.

"Alexander took 300 men and they climbed the cliff at night using tent pegs and linen rope. 30 men died. But the next day, Alexander told the defenders to look up, and they saw his 270 soldiers on the peak above them. He said, 'You see, I found the ones with wings.'"

Stevie stopped to take a bite of sandwich.

"And?" said Bucky. "What happened?"

"They surrendered on the spot. Alexander took the fort without a fight and married the general's daughter."

"No fight?! What a gyp." Bucky seemed disappointed. "Swell story, though. I see what you mean about old Alex...Hey, is the book dry yet? This thing is heavy."

Stevie checked the pages. "It is getting dry," she bit her lip, "but the pages are still all wrinkled. Miss Robinson will be so mad!" Stevie's breath began to hitch up in her chest at the thought of being banned from the library.

Bucky clicked the hair dryer off and shook out his wrists. "Don't worry about it."

Stevie clutched the poor, battered book and gave Bucky an expression that mingled disbelief and despair.

"Look, leave it to me." Bucky pointed at his chest proudly. "Ma says I have the Barnes charm."

"More than is good for you," Bucky's mother said from the doorway. "Will you be staying for dinner, Stephanie?"

"Oh!" Stevie scrambled to her feet - a little too fast, Mrs. Barnes had to take her arm to keep her from stumbling. "No, thank you Mrs. Barnes, I should get home to my dad."

"All right, but at least take something with you." She smiled maternally at Stevie. "James, walk her home, would you dear?"

Bucky, good to his word, did walk Stevie home, and he did "take care" of her library problem with a sob story that embellished the truth only slightly. He told a beaming Stevie that the book was hers to keep and she was so happy she kissed him on the cheek before she realized what she was doing. They were both, of course, mortified.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - 1933

The years passed. Bucky Barnes was now teenaged and tall, with eyes the color of a tropical ocean and a sweet smile that belied his reputation for trouble. These days, he could be spotted smoking on street corners and dancing in jazz clubs with older women. Stevie Rogers, on the other hand, didn't grow much taller and didn't fill out at all. She lacked what her homeroom teacher would call "the feminine graces," and seemed to be composed entirely of elbows and knees, wrapped up in oversized sweaters and topped with messy blonde braids. Stevie was not the kind of girl Bucky Barnes would flirt with, smoke with, or dance with - and yet they seemed to be together nine days out of every ten. When it was sunny they'd sit on the steps of the tenements and Bucky would smoke while Stevie drew or read aloud - Julius Caesar, Herodotus, Machiavelli. When it rained, and Stevie got one of her bad chest colds, Bucky would read to her - comics, mostly.

"You shouldn't stay here all day, Buck," Stevie said hoarsely from under a mound of blankets.

"Well, your pa sure can't," Bucky replied. "He's at the shop."

"Yeah, but…" Stevie interrupted herself with an alarming bout of coughing that left Bucky scrambling for a glass of water. "Thanks. Anyway, Buck, you have school. You can't afford to miss so many days."

Bucky took the empty glass and straightened the blankets around Stevie as she lay back. "Come on. You know Miss Jenkins loves you - I'll just tell her I was helping you and all will be forgiven." He raised his voice in a quavering falsetto. "For my favorite student? The incomparable Miss Rogers?" He widened his eyes and clasped his hands melodramatically over his chest. "Anything, anything at all! Take a week off! Buy a Butterfinger, on me!"

Stevie laughed at the impression, which made her cough again. Bucky hid a worried frown behind his comic book. "Now," he said, doing his best to imitate the dramatic tones of the narrator from The Shadow, "Lean back and listen to the continuing adventures of...Doc Savage...the Man of Bronze. When we last left our hero, he was trapped in the Bermuda Triangle...will he be able to fight his way free?"

If people wondered why Bucky hang around Stevie - "an asthmatic egghead with the figure of a hat rack" as one of her schoolmates aptly described her - they learned to keep both their wonder and their apt descriptions to themselves. Bucky was hot-tempered and quick with his fists. As for Stevie herself, she never wondered about it. Bucky was her friend and she was his, and that was all there was to it. Being Bucky Barnes' friend has its advantages - the girls in school didn't take Stevie's glasses anymore - but she still sometimes found herself on the wrong side of a fight. Normally, because she put herself there.

"Hey, Stevie...What's this?" Bucky took hold of her chin and tipped her face up to the thin light coming through the autumn clouds. There was a bruise on her right cheek. He glowered. "Stevie."

"Bucky," she replied, in her best imitation of his stern voice. She tried to stare him down, but looked away after a few moments. "It was Mark Kessel. I saw him in an alley with Johnny Shotsman and his goons. They were hitting him...calling him a fag."

"And you just had to step in?" Bucky glared at her. "Was it any of your business?"

"Why are you angry at me?" Stevie held her books to her chest defensively. "Johnny Shotsman is the thug who was beating up a guy in an alley."

"And now," Bucky rolled his eyes, "I have to beat up Johnny Shotsman. Again. As if I didn't have enough to do this weekend."

"It wasn't him," Stevie looked down at her shoes. "It was Mark."

"What?"

She had stepped into the mouth of the alley and called out as loudly as she could - quickly, so she wouldn't have time to chicken out. When everyone stopped and stared at her like a pack wolves eyeing a toy poodle, she felt like her teeth were going to chatter right out of her head. But she looked Johnny square in his pig eyes and told him she had seen him stealing cigarettes from the corner store, and wouldn't Mr. DiTomasso like to know? Stevie hated resorting to tattling, but what else was she going to do - wrestle him into submission? Not likely. Johnny had called her fucking snitch and tried to tower over her menacingly; but she didn't flinch, so he spat on the ground and left with his friends. Stevie was so relieved she thought she might pass out.

When she held out a hand to help Mark up, however, he had shouted that he didn't need her and pushed her, hard.

"So I slipped on something and got this," Stevie finished, pointing to her bruise. "I just can't understand why Mark would do that. I was trying to help."

Bucky pinched his nose as if she was giving him a headache. "That's why you should stay out of other people's fights, Stevie, I told you…"

Stevie looked up at him, her eyes wide, sincere and sky blue behind her thick lenses. "I can't, Buck. I can't see someone being hurt and just...walk on by. Sorry."

"You see what I have to deal with?" Bucky asked no one in particular. "There's a reason knights in shining armor are men, you know - and don't go telling me about Queen Whatshername who could lift camels and beheaded a thousand guys, ok?" He took her by the shoulders and bent down to look her in the face. "Just tell me you'll be careful. I don't want anything to happen to you."

Stevie wasn't accustomed to seeing Bucky so serious. "I'll try."

He nodded. "I'll take it." He straightened and patted her on the back, hard enough to make her cough. "Let's go; you wouldn't want to be tardy and disappoint Miss Jenkins."

They walked along in silence...for a moment. "Ugh. Mark Kessel." Bucky said, twisting his face like he just ate a lemon. "I can't hit Mark Kessel - he weighs less than you. Why couldn't it have been Johnny Shotsman? I love punching that creep."

**Notes: Thank you to everyone who has read and followed! I hope to continue updating every week - until I catch up with myself (working on Chapter 11 currently).** Please forgive any irregularities of formatting - I'm still getting used to working with FFN's document uploader thingy.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - June 7, 1941

*A short chapter this time. This scene is derived from the flashback in _Winter Soldier,_ where Bucky offers Steve a job and a place to stay. In this universe, Bucky offers Stevie...something else.

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><p><em>It should be raining.<em> Stevie thought. _A bitter, freezing rain._

That would have been the right weather for a funeral, but instead it was a perfect June day: sunny, breezy, and not yet too hot to hang around outside in the afternoon. The graveside sermon had been accompanied by inconsiderately tweeting birds, the walk home interrupted by bands of laughing, scampering children. Now, Stevie and Bucky stood in front of her apartment, her hand on the doorknob. She couldn't bring herself to open the door, to see the home she had shared with her father quiet and empty.

Bucky shifted and cleared his throat. "So..I thought the ceremony was...nice."

Stevie nodded. "He's next to mom now. It's what he wanted."

"And what about you?" He asked. "How are you doing?"

"The fellas from the shop scraped up a collection, so I should have enough for a few months rent, enough to cover me until I find a job."

_Hopefully find a job. A job where the boss is alright with me calling off sick every other week. I'm doomed._

"That's not what I meant, exactly," Bucky smoothed his dark hair back from his face. "But since we're on the subject, I thought...I thought you might consider...moving in...with me."

Stevie let go of the doorknob and turned around. Bucky kept talking, more quickly now.

"I mean, I have my own place now, and the pay at the garage is good, good enough to support a wi..." He cut himself off, cast about for something else to say. "It'll be fun! We could make forts in the living room, like when we were kids." Bucky winced at the words, as if he knew how ridiculous they sounded.

"Are you asking me to...to...marry you?" Stevie asked, incredulous. "On the landing? On the day of my father's funeral?" She started to giggle. "And I thought you had the Barnes charm."

"Hey, it's not a terrible idea," Bucky said defensively. "We like each other. We've been friends for ages."

"Not a terrible idea?" Stevie laughed at that, a laugh without humor. "Marriage isn't...pillow forts in the living room. It'd be like a pigeon marrying a peacock!"

"Well, Miss Pigeon," Bucky said through gritted teeth, "thanks for making it clear that homelessness is preferable to marrying me. What was your plan, huh? Find a job where the boss doesn't mind that you're sick all the time?"

That was so close to what Stevie was thinking that it hurt. And what lay under the words - the assumption that she was too weak to take care of herself. That she was useless. That hurt, too.

"Not used to girls saying no to you, are you?" She replied. "You're so handsome and so charming, you can have anyone you want. I suppose I should have fallen at your feet with gratitude that you noticed me at all!" Stevie was breathing hard now, almost vibrating with rage. "Well, I don't need your pity! I'd rather make it a...alone..."

Suddenly she was crying, and Bucky was there with his arms around her. "Shh," he murmured, "I'm with you." She grabbed his shirt with both hands and sobbed into his chest. Bucky held her until the crying was done and she just stood there, leaning on him. He smelled like soap and cigarettes.

"I can't go in there," Stevie said.

"Hm?"

She pulled back and looked up at Bucky. "I can't face it, the apartment without Dad. What'll I do, Bucky?"

"That's easy," Bucky said. He gently removed Stevie's glasses - smeared and crooked from being crushed against his chest - and cleaned them on the edge of his shirt before handing them back. "Ma told me you can stay with her. I'll take care of whatever you need from the apartment. Come on."

"Thanks," Stevie said softly, putting her glasses back on. The lenses were streaky and smudged, as they always were when Bucky cleaned them for her.

"Don't mention it," he said, wearing a little half-smile, completely at ease, as if the whole embarrassing proposal had never happened. "We're friends. Till the end of the line."

Bucky's mother was happy to have Stevie stay, in fact, she was happy to let Stevie stay indefinitely. "It'll be nice having another woman around after so long living with this hooligan," she said, and swatted Bucky's arm with a dish towel.

Stevie wondered why Bucky hadn't suggested that first, instead of his awkward proposal on the landing. _The funeral must have gotten to him_, she thought, and put it out of her mind.

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><p>Notes: Thanks to all of you who have been reading and following so far! Next week, we jump into movie continuity, so chapters will get longer and we'll meet some of our old friends - or at least, my versions of them. Stay tuned!<p>

More Notes: If you saw this earlier in the day, I apologize - some really bizarre format glitch happened and made it virtually unreadable. If anyone has suggestions about keeping that from happening, let me know.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - June 14, 1943

*Thanks to everyone who's been reading and following so far. I consider you all my Valentines - and hope you enjoy this belated V-Day gift.

Captain America belongs to many people - and none of them are me.

* * *

><p>Dust motes danced in the flickering light of the projector. On the screen, images of bombed-out buildings and marching troops stood out in stark black and white, backed by the narrator's crisp diction.<p>

"War continues to ravage Europe...but help is on the way. Every able-bodied young man is lining up to serve his country."

_And one slightly less able-bodied young woman._ Stevie thought with a sigh. Just that morning she had been rejected from the Army Nurse Corps - her fifth rejection, after the WAVEs, the WAACs, the WASPs and the SPARs. She had applied for each under a different name, in hope they wouldn't realize what she was doing, but there was no hiding the asthma, the glasses and the myriad other problems that disqualified her from military service.

_The war effort has no use for a semi-invalid with astigmatism. Big surprise there._

"Even little Timmy is doing his part, collecting scrap metal." On the screen, a gap-toothed youngster in a smaller version of a soldier's cap scrambled around a junkyard with a pack of other boys. He held up a bicycle wheel triumphantly. "Nice work, Timmy!"

_Well, there's an option._

"Who cares! Play the movie already," someone called out from in front of her. Stevie looked around for the source of the voice. Just two rows ahead, a man slouched in his seat, smiling as if he had done something witty and eating popcorn with his mouth open. _What a troglodyte. _Stevie leaned forward.

"Hey," she said softly. "Want to show some respect?" _I mean, people are only _dying _over there for you._

The narrator continued, unperturbed. "Meanwhile, overseas, our brave boys are showing the Axis powers that the price of freedom is never too high."

The troglodyte appeared not to have heard Stevie. "Let's go, get on with it!" He yelled at the screen. "Just start the cartoon!" Clearly, a more forceful approach was required.

"Hey," Stevie yelled in his direction. "You want to shut up?" He turned around angrily, but, seeing that the person calling him out was a five foot tall girl with coke-bottle glasses, he laughed.

"Why don't you make me, sweetheart?" He said, with a dismissive snort.

"Okay", said Stevie, and, standing, she tossed the full contents of her popcorn bucket directly into his stupid face.

* * *

><p>The manager of the theater had been a sergeant major in the 2nd Durham Light Infantry in the Great War, and, though not young, was still quite capable of hauling two protesting customers out into the alley when necessary - sending them off with a warning not to return to the theater until they could be "civil." Stevie was tempted to kick a trashcan on her way out, but knew from experience that would hurt her more than anyone else.<p>

When she got to the mouth of the alley, Bucky was waiting for her. "Sometimes I think you just like causing trouble," he said, shaking his head. He wore a brown army uniform, khaki shirt and tie, a brown cap with a gold eagle pin tilted rakishly over one eye. She had never seen him in uniform before. He looked like he had sprung from recruitment poster, handsome and polished with a confident grin. All that was missing was an American flag and a catchy slogan.

"I'll have you know, I was completely justified," she replied. "What are you doing here?" Bucky had been training for the past eight weeks at Madison Barracks upstate.

"Ma said you were watching _The Phantom_. Thought I could catch the end, but I guess that won't be happening."

"No, I mean, what are you doing _here_, so soon. You get your orders?"

Bucky nodded and held out his arms as if presenting himself onstage. "Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th. Shipping out for England first thing tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Stevie felt a hard lump at the base of her throat. "That's...sudden." She had known this was coming ever since Bucky enlisted, but somehow it was still a shock. Now her old friend was a sergeant, he had a uniform, and in a few weeks he would be one in a line of soldiers march, march, marching off into God knew what. Marching off without her.

"Come on, Pigeon. Don't look so glum!" he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. He was bulkier now, too, she found, with new muscles from the endless push ups and drills he wrote home about. "It's my last night, so we're gonna get you dressed up and go out on the town." He steered her down the street.

"Where are we going?" Stevie asked. Bucky, obviously ready for the question, handed her a pamphlet that proclaimed _World Expo!_ in bold block lettering over a picture of a metal globe.

"The future!" said Bucky grandly, "And I got you a date."

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><p>Stevie hated going on dates. Specifically, she hated the look guys gave her when they realized <em>she<em> was the date that famous ladies' man Bucky Barnes had set them up with. Sure, the guys Bucky found for her always _said_ they really wanted an intelligent girl with an artistic soul who could talk about serious issues - but the unspoken addition was "and who also has a figure like Dorothy Lamour."

"What'd you tell him about me?" Stevie asked Bucky warily as they approached the crowded expo center. She was wearing makeup and a second hand gingham dress that Bucky's mother had taken in for her, all of which made her feel like she was pretending to be someone else - someone who didn't have passionate arguments about the virtues of the tower shield versus the kite shield in a combat situation.

"Only the good stuff," Bucky said, which was not very reassuring, in Stevie's opinion. He had acquired his date, a cheerful brunette with a sweet, heart-shaped face and big brown eyes. She hung on his arm, as if she had known him far longer than a few hours.

"And there he is. Bill!" Bucky waved to a young man standing at the base of a lamp post. If Bucky looked like a recruitment poster in his uniform, Bill looked more like a caricature in his - skinny, young, rumpled, and a bit daffy-looking, with an unsuccessful blond mustache.

_Here it comes,_ thought Stevie as Bill looked first at Bucky's date, and then at her. It was almost comical, how his expression fell. She met his look of disappointment with a wry smile. _You aren't exactly Gary Cooper yourself, buddy._

If Bill was a disappointment, the fairgrounds and the Modern Marvels Pavilion was anything but. A train, somehow suspended _below_ an elevated rail, curved dramatically around a giant, metal globe. Spotlights streamed up into the sky from futuristic buildings that looked like they came straight from the pages of _Astounding Science Fiction Monthly_. Inside the pavilion, Stevie walked behind Bill and Bucky and Bucky's date, gawking at three-dimensional cross sections of the earth, mannequins in space suits, and a giant tank holding a scale model of an underwater city. The difference between the pavilion and that afternoon's filmstrip, with its images of European monuments reduced to rubble, was jarring. The future and the present. Hope and fear.

Bucky's date was pulling him forward towards a stage where a sleek, red sportscar stood, decoratively surrounded by women in chorus-girl attire - sparkly tuxedo tops and tights.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said one of the tuxedo girls into a large microphone, "The mind behind the Expo, the world-renowned inventor - Mr. Howard Stark!"

Bucky's date squealed and clapped as Mr. Stark strode on stage, a suave man in a sharp suit, with oiled black hair, a pencil mustache and the swagger of a man who had gotten everything he wanted for most of his life. Before taking the microphone from his chorus girl announcer, he gave her a kiss on the lips that almost dislodged her top hat. Stevie rolled her eyes. She had precisely zero desire to see Howard Stark showboating.

"I'm going to get some Cracker Jack," she said to Bill, who had been doing his best to ignore her since they met. "Want any?" His eyes were still glued to Bucky's date. "Good."

* * *

><p>Stevie had noticed the recruitment station on the way in, and now she stood in front of it, wondering if, in her case, the sixth time would be the charm. On the men's side, there was a special, full length poster of a uniformed soldier without a face. Thanks to a trick of mirrors and lighting, a man who stood in front of it would see his own face beaming out from under the helmet. By the smaller, women's entrance, there was a poster of a smiling woman in uniform, carrying a pack.<p>

_This is my war, too_, the poster said.

"Damn right," Stevie muttered, and strode into the lobby. She introduced herself to the woman at the reception table, only to turn around and find Bucky behind her. _Good grief, that was fast. _Did he have eyes in the back of his head or something?

"Kind of missing the point of a double date," he said. "We were going to go dancing."

"You go ahead," said Stevie. "I'll catch up with you."

"You really gonna do this again?" he asked.

"Well, it is a fair," said Stevie lightly. "I thought I'd try my luck."

"With who? As who?" said Bucky, "You've tried literally everywhere." He pulled her away from the reception desk and lowered his voice. "Ma told me you went to your last appointment as 'Jane from Ohio.' That's illegal, Stevie. They could catch you. Or worse, they could take you."

"Look, I know you're worried," said Stevie. "But it's not like I'd be on the front lines! I know I can't fight, I just want to help."

"Then help here."

"Doing what? Collecting scrap metal? Knitting socks?" Stevie had forgotten about being quiet. The receptionist was openly staring, as was a short, balding man in a white coat, probably one of the doctors. "There are men laying down their lives over there. If I can't do that, then I have to do the best I can to help them. And that isn't sitting in a factory, Bucky. I know I can do more."

Normally, at this point, he would argue, but instead he looked at her with a wistful smile that struck Stevie speechless. "You've got nothing to prove," he said.

"Hey, Barnes," Bucky's date was waiting on the stairs. "Are we going dancing?"

"Yes, we are," he called back. "Sure you're not coming?" He asked Stevie.

She shook her head. "Should we see you off at the station tomorrow?"

"I hate big goodbyes," Bucky said. "Don't do anything stupid until I get back, okay?"

"How can I?" Stevie said sweetly. "You're taking all the stupid with you."

Bucky ruffled her hair. "Pigeon."

She swatted his hand. "You're such a jerk," she said, and he folded her into a sudden hug.

"Write me, okay?" He said. Stevie heard something beneath the words. Something like worry, like tension, like the beginning of fear. That couldn't be right. Bucky wasn't afraid of anything.

"Of course."

And then he stepped away from her, all smiles and charm again. "Come on Liz," he said, holding out an arm to the girl on the stairs. "They're playing our song."

* * *

><p>Stevie sat in one of the exam areas, behind a white curtain. She had been waiting what seemed like an unusually long time, which worried her. What had the receptionist overheard? Did they know about Jane from Ohio? She was debating whether to just slip out the back when the curtain opened, admitting the same short, balding man she had seen in the lobby, carrying a file and a dog-eared notebook. His fringe of graying hair stood out from his head like dandelion fluff and his chin bore several days growth of salt-and-pepper beard.<p>

"So," he said brusquely. "You want to join the Women's Reserve." He had a clipped, Teutonic accent. Was he…German? It seemed rude to ask.

"Yes, I do," she said, and tried to sit up straighter so she wouldn't look so short. The doctor peered at her intently through a pair of spectacles almost as thick as her own.

"I am Doctor Abraham Erskine. I represent Strategic Scientific Research," he said. Stevie had never heard of it. "And I am German. Does this trouble you?"

She shook her head. "I'm Stephanie Rogers," she said.

"Are you?" He opened the file he was carrying and began flipping through pages. "Or is it Jane from Ohio? Or Mary from New Haven? Five exams under five different names."

_Damn._ "Um…" Stevie said, "That might not be the right file…"

Dr. Erskine directed a sharp look at Stevie. "It's not the exams I'm interested in. It's the five tries."

_What does that mean?_ Stevie thought. She was finding it hard to tell whether or not she was in trouble.

"So, back to the Women's Reserve," he continued. "You want excitement, adventure, maybe a little romance, yes? To prove yourself, and be able to write impressive letters back to friends and family at home? Who knows, you might even get to kill a Nazi." He said that as if it were a treat, or a prize she could win.

"What? No!" Stevie felt like she had been insulted. The doctor was watching her from behind his spectacles, waiting to see what she would say, what she would do.

"Is this some kind of test?" She asked.

"Yes," the doctor said flatly.

"I'm not in it for excitement, or...romance. God, no. And I definitely don't want to...to kill anybody," Stevie paused to think. If this was a test, she was going to tell him the unvarnished truth and hope it was enough. "I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from. I just want to do my bit. I want to help."

Dr. Erskine studied her for a long moment, and then he smiled.

"Well," he said. "There are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is a small girl."

"Huh?" That was just about the last response Stevie had expected.

Dr. Erskine was filling out a form. "I can offer you a chance," he said. "Only a chance."

"I'll take it," Stevie said immediately.

"Good," the doctor gave her the form. It was stamped 1-A. Fit for duty.

* * *

><p>Notes: Here we are - in the movie timeline! What exciting stuff is on the way!<p>

My sister, a German scholar (who goes by Hey Gal on the Something Awful forums - check her out), informed me that Erskine is not a German name, and dangit, she's right! It's Scottish. So now, in my mind, Erskine's grandfather was Scottish.

Also, as the story proceeds, you may wonder how I know what dates things are happening. The awesome Marvel Cinematic Universe Timeline is the answer! And a great resource for all writers of MCU fanfiction. It's over at the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 - June 15-21, Camp Lejeune

* * *

><p><em>Dear Bucky,<em>

_Surprise, surprise - I've been accepted to the USMC Women's Reserve! I am now a Marinette. But don't worry your pretty head - I'll be working stateside as a radio operator, or maybe a code-breaker if I'm lucky. When you picture me, imagine me in an office, hunched over a radio. _

Here, she drew an exaggerated doodle of herself at a desk, wearing a giant pair of headphones and surrounded by teetering mountains of paperwork.

_Or you can picture me hunched over by the side of the road, puking my guts out. Why didn't didn't you tell me training was so hard!? Also, I'm not sure the food is real. Was it ever alive or do they just churn it out in a factory in Newark?_

She closed with a sketch of a Marinette color guard - herself standing at the end with messy braids and thick spectacles, beating a snare drum.

_D__on't win the war before I'm done._

_Stevie_

* * *

><p>Stevie didn't like lying to Bucky, even by omission, but she had been strictly warned not to tell anyone why she was really at Camp Lejeune. Even the Marine recruits and the other Marinettes in training at the camp didn't know what the eleven "special trainees" were engaged in - a top secret operation called "Project Rebirth." The morning after Stevie had arrived, the drill sergeant had lined them up on one corner of the parade ground - ten tall, athletic women - and Stevie at the end, half a head shorter than the rest. It was early and the day was cool, with a breeze blowing in from the sea. They were wearing loose pants and shirts that reminded Stevie of men's fatigues, which gave her the sinking suspicion that they would be doing a lot of calisthenics. <em>Well, you did sign up for the Marines, <em>Stevie told herself. _What did you expect? _Just as she had this thought, a jeep pulled up in front of them and the sergeant barked out, "Attention!"

Stevie and the rest of the trainees snapped straight. Three people emerged from the car. The first was Dr. Erskine, bearing a clipboard and the what looked like the same battered notebook he had been carrying in the recruitment center. He greeted Stevie with a smile and a small wave. The second person to leave the car was a colonel who reminded Stevie of a hunting hound - droopy and displeased. The third was a woman. She wore a uniform like the Marinettes wore - tailored brown jacket and an A-line skirt cut just below the knee - but on her it looked as elegant as the latest New York fashions. Her lips were rogued, and her dark hair fell in soft, movie-star curls around her face. She and the Colonel stopped in front of the group, while Dr. Erskine held back, clipboard at the ready.

"At ease, ladies," said the colonel, in a voice with a mild twang that might have been Texan. "I am Colonel Phillips." He gestured towards the woman. "This is Agent Carter." He began pacing slowly in front of the trainees, looking intently at each one. "General Patton has said, 'wars are fought with weapons, but they are won by men.' We are going to win this war because we have the best men." He stopped in front of Stevie and did a double take, his smooth speech faltering for a moment. "And you are going to help them get better. Much better."

He had reached the center of the line again and stopped pacing, facing them with his arms behind his back. "The Strategic Scientific Reserve is an allied effort, made up of the best minds of the free world." Here he nodded at Dr. Erskine. "Our goal is to create the best army in history. But every army has to start somewhere."

He looked out at them, his brown eyes piercing in his wrinkled face. "By volunteering for this program, you ladies are freeing our servicemen to fight while we develop and perfect Project Rebirth. At the end of this week, one of you will be chosen to be the first to undergo the process that will create a new breed of super soldiers - soldiers who will personally escort Adolf Hitler through the gates of Hell."

Stevie felt her pulse quicken. This was exactly the kind of work she had wanted to do for the war effort - real, meaningful work. Work that could help save the lives of the boys fighting overseas. She silently promised that she would give her all to this project, no matter how hard it was. But very soon she was struggling to see why she had been chosen for Project Rebirth at all.

* * *

><p>Day one of training - or, more appropriately, testing - consisted of physical drills as Stevie had suspected - running, calisthenics, and obstacle courses that left her wheezing, retching, or in one embarrassing case, fainting. Stevie's fellow recruits, on the other hand, were more than up to the task. The group of ten assorted swimmers, runners and gymnasts bounded through each challenge like a herd of lithe gazelles. But despite being unified by a common purpose, the group of special trainees was not entirely harmonious.<p>

The final challenge of the day was a sprint along the beach that formed the eastern border of Camp Lejeune. The other trainees had already made it to the halfway point and were turning back, coming towards Stevie as she panted and puffed, mired in the wet sand. The front runner, Alice Hodge, had run hurdles in the 1936 Olympics. Though deceptively petite, almost delicate-looking, she was clearly one of the strongest recruits and had come in first or second in every test so far. This time, though, it looked like she might lose her first-place slot; a tall, muscular blonde was gaining on her, and as they approached Stevie, the blonde and Alice were neck and neck. Then, Alice put out her foot and sent the blonde tumbling into the sand.

Stevie jogged over to her. "Are...you...alright?" she said, in between gasps.

The blonde stood up and brushed herself off. "I think so," she said. She tested her weight on her right foot and frowned. "I don't think it's sprained.'

Both women looked toward the finish line, where Alice was getting a pat on the back from Colonel Phillips. _What is her problem?_ Stevie thought.

"Pick it up ladies!" Colonel Phillips called. "Rogers! Move it!"

"Thanks," the blonde said quickly, and joined the other trainees as they thundered past.

Stevie looked at the long trudge ahead of her and groaned.

* * *

><p>Night at the camp was...different. Stevie had never spent the night outside of Brooklyn, and the various hoots, chirps and squawks coming from the pine forest around the barracks seemed eerie and sinister. Stevie wondered if there were still wolves out there. Or bears.<p>

_I thought nature was supposed to be quiet and peaceful_, Stevie thought, shivering. The stars were spectacularly bright, compared to the faint, washed-out stars that made it past the lights of the city. They looked close enough to touch.

_Ah, there she is._

Alice was leaning against the back wall of the barracks, looking out into the trees. She had ducked away after lights-out for a smoke, a risky proposition if she was caught, but it meant Stevie could talk to her alone.

"I saw what you did," Stevie said.

"Beg pardon?" Alice didn't even look at her.

"I saw you trip Helen on the beach."

"Oh," said Alice, unconcerned. "That." She continued smoking, staring at the dark forest. Stevie felt her anger rising in her chest.

"I just don't get it," Stevie said, "You're really, really good already. You're probably the best of the bunch. Why would you do something like that? Helen could have turned her ankle!"

Now Alice did look at her - as if she had crawled out from under a rock. "I wouldn't expect you to understand," she said, infusing the word "you" with so much condescension that Stevie felt the momentary urge to slap her.

"I didn't get where I am by being nice," Alice continued. "I got to the Olympics because I did everything and anything it took. _Everything_." Stevie saw something in Alice's eyes that surpassed mere determination. Something like mania.

"But we're all on the same team!" Stevie said.

"Wrong," said Alice, and flicked glowing sparks from her cigarette. "They'll pick one of us. One. And the woman they pick will win the ultimate prize. She'll be the first of a superior race." Alice's eyes glowed in the night. "That's a once in a lifetime chance, and I am not letting it slip by. If the others want it, they'll just have to fight for it. Harder than I can."

Stevie couldn't think of anything to say to counter Alice's naked ambition, so she just stared at her.

"You know," Alice continued, "At first I couldn't figure out why they chose you for the project."

_You and me both_, Stevie thought.

"Do you know what I think now?" Alice leaned in to look Stevie in the face. Stevie shook her head. "I think you're a mole. You look so harmless no one would suspect you, but you're going to go and tell the Colonel and the doctor everything we say and do when they're not around. One more part of the test." She took another drag. The smoke was stinging Stevie's throat, and she fought the urge to cough. "So. Are you going to tell Colonel Phillips what you saw me do?"

Stevie had considered it, but Colonel Phillips seemed like the type who would expect trainees to fight their own battles.

"I don't think he'd take kindly to tattling," Stevie said.

"Good," Alice dropped her cigarette and ground it out under her foot. She turned to go in, then stopped, and turned back to Stevie.

"Look, Cindy, is it?" Alice said.

"Stevie," she corrected, through gritted teeth.

"Stay out of my way, Stevie."

* * *

><p>While day one consisted of physical tests, day two consisted of mental tests - tests of teamwork, problem solving, and lateral thinking, supervised by the watchful and silent Agent Carter. Stevie excelled at them, but Alice was merely average - a fact the seemed to make her quietly furious. The evening in the mess hall, someone bumped into Stevie so hard that she dropped her tray. Colonel Phillips sighed and muttered something that didn't sound appropriate for mixed company.<p>

Day three consisted of marksmanship training - trainees shot at paper targets using rifles, handguns, even Tommy guns, which Stevie had always associated with gangster movies. A few of the trainees were already experienced hunters, and others were quick learners; but Stevie was awkward enough to be dangerous. After she almost put a hole through the instructor who was teaching her how to hold a revolver, Colonel Phillips parked her at the edge of the firing range with an M1 rifle and a target so far out of Stevie's myopic range of vision that she could only speculate if she was hitting it or not. There was no speculation about the bruise growing on Stevie's shoulder, though. The M1 had one hell of a kick.

"You're not holding it right," said a soft, British voice behind her.

Stevie turned - after carefully putting down the gun; Colonel Phillips had strictly ordered her not to kill anyone. It was the woman in uniform - Agent Carter. She had spoken so little until this point that Stevie hadn't realized she was English.

"May I show you?" Agent Carter's voice was as polished as the rest of her, melodious and cultured. Stevie handed her the M1, and Agent Carter lifted it smoothly to her shoulder, pointing it at the distant target.

"Square yourself up to what you're shooting at, don't come at it from the side. Stand with your feet apart and stagger your right foot a little behind your left," Agent Carter demonstrated the stance and she talked. She was obviously experienced. "Hold the rifle stock near the center of your body, high up on your chest, and keep your elbows down. That will minimize the recoil. Here," She handed the rifle back to Stevie. "Have a go."

"Okay," Stevie tried to imitate what Agent Carter had just shown her, feeling more awkward than ever in front of this confident, skilled woman who was just about everything that Stevie herself was not.

"Good!" Agent Carter said. "Look through the ring and try center your front sight in it." Stevie squinted one eye shut. The ring of the rear sight blurred as she focused on the metal knob that was the front sight.

Agent Carter continued. "Now, aim the front sight just underneath the target."

"Got it," Stevie said. The target was 200 yards away, within the M1's range, but pretty much a dot to Stevie. She tried to aim in the general vicinity of the printed red circle.

"Alright," Agent Carter said calmly, "now press the trigger steadily, straight to the rear. Don't anticipate when the gun will fire. Just concentrate on squeezing the trigger."

Stevie took a deep breath, held it, and squeezed - trying to relax and not jerk in anticipation of the shot. The gun went off with a deafening crack and she let out her breath in a rush. She wasn't sure she was any more accurate, but at least she no longer felt like she was getting kicked in the shoulder by a horse.

"Very good!" said Agent Carter, with a smile that had probably left a trail of broken hearts all over London or wherever she was from. _Just the kind of girl Bucky would love,_ Stevie thought. She imagined what Bucky would say about her own piss-poor shooting performance. He was a natural marksman, and had trained as a sniper before shipping out - part of the reason he left training as a sergeant instead of a lowly private. Thinking of Bucky gave Stevie a sudden pang of loneliness.

Agent Carter made Stevie take five more shots before they went to check the target, where Stevie was happy to see six bullet holes - if not in the bullseye, or even on the red circle, at least on the square of the target itself.

"You really know your stuff," Stevie said to Agent Carter, as they walked back to where the other trainees were on the main firing range. Agent Carter was confident that Stevie could learn to shoot a handgun now without unintentionally maiming anybody.

"Yes," Agent Carter replied. "My father would hold a hunt at the estate every November. Pheasants, mostly."

"Oh," said Stevie. There was an awkward pause in which she wondered exactly how much money one had to make before one had an "estate" instead of just a house. "I have more experience with pigeons myself. Not shooting them, you understand. Primarily just tossing bread crumbs in their general direction."

Another awkward pause descended. Stevie had never been very good at having female friends; she never seemed to know what to talk about. Most girls in Brooklyn hadn't cared about military history. Agent Carter looked like she might, though. Stevie cleared her throat.

"So, if you don't mind me asking," Stevie said, "How did you get from the estate and the pheasants to Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina?"

"My family wanted to do their bit, so they volunteered the house to be used as a hospital for wounded airmen," Agent Carter said.

_Her house is big enough to be a hospital,_ thought Stevie, picturing the cramped apartment she shared with Bucky's mother in Brooklyn.

"I had never seen anything like what I saw there," Agent Carter said softly, looking out past the camp, to another place and time. "The men had all survived being shot down, but at terrible cost. They had limbs missing, horrible burns. They woke up at night screaming and weeping." She shook her head slightly as if trying to dislodge the memories.

"Instead of holding their hands and wiping their fevered brows, I thought it would be a damned sight more efficient to stop them getting shot up in the first place. So I thoroughly irritated quite a few important people until the Special Air Service agreed to have me. Ah, here we are."

They had reached the handgun range, where Stevie's former instructor, upon seeing her, decided he had urgent business elsewhere.

"Well," Agent Carter said. "Now that you have the rifle down, I'm sure you'll take to the sidearms just 's really nothing to it." Drawing her own sidearm, she promptly discharged five shots into the dead center of the nearest target.

"Nothing to it," Stevie agreed weakly.

* * *

><p>Day four was hand to hand combat training - led, surprisingly, by the genteel Agent Carter - who, despite her impeccable manners, was just as stern in her way as the Colonel was in his. When Alice muttered that "Queen Victoria over there sure was a stuck up bitch," Agent Carter didn't show any sign of overhearing, but suddenly Alice became Agent Carter's assistant in demonstrating joint locks, throws, and, in one memorable example, how to knock an opponent down with one punch.<p>

_Yup_, thought Stevie. _She's just Bucky's type._

Day five and six were filled with tactical exercises and - joy of joys - more obstacle courses. At this point, Stevie lived in an exhausted haze, her main hopes to not faint again and not run afoul of Alice. Whether or not she still thought Stevie was a spy for the Colonel, harassing her seemed to help Alice deal with the stress of training, and so, as day seven approached, Alice become more hostile. The night after Agent Carter had knocked Alice down, Stevie's hairbrush and toothbrush had mysteriously disappeared, leaving her to beg and borrow from the other trainees. When everyone had to crawl under barbed wire in full gear, Alice had "accidentally" kicked over a support beam, trapping Stevie in a snarl of wire and wood. Colonel Phillips had pulled her out with a long-suffering sigh.

Day seven dawned clear and hot. Everyone knew that this was the day that the Colonel, Dr. Erskine, and Agent Carter would make their decision, and an atmosphere of nervous energy permeated the group. Agent Carter had been putting them through drills all morning and now they were on the parade ground, trying to complete as many push ups, squat thrusts and jumping jacks as possible while she timed them with a stopwatch.

"Faster, ladies, come on!" She said. "My grandmother has more life in her, God rest her soul."

For all Agent Carter's exhortations, Stevie got the impression that her heart wasn't in it. They were just marking time. Agent Carter, like the rest of the group, was waiting to find out who had been chosen, watching Colonel Phillips and Dr. Erskine out the corner of her eye. The Colonel and the Doctor were standing a ways apart from the group - having an argument by the look of things. Stevie caught a few words as she struggled through an interminable set of push ups.

"Never thought you'd pick her." That was the colonel's Texas twang.

"I am looking for qualities beyond the physical." That was Dr. Erskine's clipped, German accent.

"Do you know how long it took to set up this project?" The Colonel countered. "How much groveling I had to do…." The next few words were drowned out by Agent Carter ordering them to get up and begin another endless set of jumping jacks. The Colonel continued.

"Alice Hodge passed every test we gave her. She's strong, she's fast."

"She's a bully," said Dr. Erskine.

"You don't win wars with niceness, Doctor," the colonel said. "You win wars with guts."

And then metal object, about the size of a man's fist, fell to earth in the center of the trainees' ranks. Everyone stared at it stupidly for a second. It looked a little like a pine cone.

_Wait,_ Stevie thought, _Is that a…_

"Grenade!"

The trainees scattered like pigeons fleeing an oncoming bus. Shrieks filled the air as they scrambled for cover, Alice vaulting over the hood of a jeep, other trainees running to get behind troop carriers or even just hummocks of dirt. Stevie did not run. She felt like time had slowed down, like she could see everything with perfect clarity. The trainees and Agent Carter wouldn't be able to get to cover in time. They would be hurt. Some would be killed. There was only one solution.

Stevie threw herself to the ground and curled around the grenade as tightly as she could, like a running back protecting a football.

"Get back!" she cried. She didn't know if her meager bulk would be enough to completely contain the explosion.

Stevie's whole body felt like one clenched fist as she waited for the grenade to go off. Would it hurt? Would she feel it at all? Would Bucky ever find out what happened to her? She squeezed her eyes shut and heard her own heartbeat pounding in her ears - one, two, three, four….Shouldn't it have exploded by now? She opened her eyes again. Colonel Phillips and Dr. Erskine were standing over her - the Colonel looking exasperated, the doctor smiling almost smugly. Stevie felt a rush of relief - mixed with confusion.

"Is this a test?" She asked.

The Colonel turned to Dr. Erskine instead of answering her. "She's still skinny," he said, and stomped away, leaving the doctor to tell Stevie that she had been chosen to be the test subject for Project Rebirth.

* * *

><p><strong>Note: <strong>Thanks to all you fine people for reading and reviewing! Peggy's instructions about firing a rifle come from The Art of Manliness blog article "How to Fire a Rifle" - because I know nothing about guns. **  
><strong>


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 - June 22, 1943

Note: In this chapter we get to know one of my new favorite characters - Peggy Carter. Are you watching Marvel's Agent Carter? Because you should be.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Bucky,<em>

_By the time you read this, I'll be…_

Stevie wondered what to write. _I'll be different?_ _I'll be taller?_ If the project didn't go as planned, she could end up worse than she was now. Or dead. She tore the page out of her sketchbook and crumpled it. The whole project was classified anyway; she'd probably never be allowed to send any letter she did write.

_Well, if it works, Bucky will be very surprised when he comes back_, she thought.

Stevie was sitting on her cot in the empty barracks. It was late afternoon and she had already packed up the rest of her things, to be ready to leave that night. The Colonel had said the test would take place the next morning, somewhere several hours travel from Camp Lejeune, so she would be travelling through the night. The ten other trainees had been folded into the regular Marinette training program, off to become radio operators, code breakers and mechanics. Alice had left with good grace - Stevie had almost expected her to throw a punch, but Alice had just looked at her in passing, a look that blended anger with profound disappointment. Stevie had almost felt sorry for her.

There was a soft knock. Dr. Erskine stood in the doorway with a bottle of something golden-brown and a pair of what looked like stubby wine glasses.

"May I?" He asked.

"Sure," said Stevie, gesturing at the cot in front of her. He sat down and put the glasses and bottle on the foot locker. She felt all her unanswered questions well up inside her. Why had he picked her at the World Expo? Why had he championed her to the Colonel? Why had he chosen her to be the test subject?

Stevie gathered her courage. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Just one?" The doctor arched an eyebrow.

"Why me?"

The doctor nodded. "I suppose that is the one question that matters." He picked up the bottle and held it to the light. "This is from Augsburg," he said. "My city." In those two words, Stevie heard an untold story of loss and pain. The doctor continued.

"So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own. After the last war, they felt…weak. They felt slow. Then Hitler comes along with the marching and the big show and the flags and all that." The curl of his lip underscored his tone of contempt.

"And he hears of me. My work. And he finds me." Fear. That was what Stevie saw in the doctor's face now. "Then he says, you." He pointed at Stevie, the gesture of a remembered conversation. "He says, you will make us strong. Well, I am not interested, so he sends the head of Hydra - the Nazi research division - a brilliant scientist by the name of Johann Schmidt."

If his mention of Hitler carried fear, mentioning Schmidt seemed to evoke something worse. A shadow of terror hung over the doctor when he spoke that name.

"Now Schmidt is a member of the inner circle, and he's ambitious. Even Hitler shares his passion for occult power and Teutonic myth. Hitler uses these fantasies to inspire his followers, but for Schmidt it is not fantasy. For him, it is real. He has become convinced that is great power hidden in the earth, left here by the gods, waiting to be seized by superior men."

Doctor Erskine clenched his fist, as if miming the act of seizing power from the earth. Stevie felt a shiver run through her. She had been getting an impression of how big the war was, but now she realized that it was also curiously small. That the fate of the world was hanging upon the mad whims of a few men.

"When Schmidt found my formula and what it can do," the Doctor continued, "he cannot resist. He wants to become the superior man."

_This formula's already been used?_ Stevie hadn't known that. "Did it make him stronger?" she asked.

Doctor Erskine nodded. "_Ja_," he said, somberly. "But it has...other effects."

_That doesn't sound good._

"The serum wasn't ready. But more important, the man." Doctor Erskine looked at Stevie, his brown eyes as searching as they had been in the recruiting station. "The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great. Bad becomes worse." He pointed at her.

"That is why you were chosen," he said. "Because the strong, who have known power all their lives, they lose respect for that power. But the weak know the value of strength. The value of mercy, and compassion."

He had said those last words in a tone of unshakeable confidence, and Stevie realized he was talking about her. He trusted her enough to give her the serum, and believed that she was good enough to make it work. That he believed in her precisely because she was an utter weakling spoiled the moment only a little.

"Thanks," Stevie said. "I think."

Doctor Erskine nodded and fiddled with the bottle, removing a wire cap and pulling out the cork with a soft pop. He handed Stevie one of the glasses and poured a little of the golden liqueur into its round bowl, then poured a glass for himself, raising it as if making a toast.

"Whatever happens tomorrow," he said, "you must promise me one thing."

Stevie nodded. The doctor smiled at her warmly.

"Promise that you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good person. A kind woman."

Stevie smiled back. "I'll drink to that," she said, and raised her glass to touch his. She took a healthy swallow, thinking something that looked so much like a butterscotch hard candy probably tasted just as smooth. It hit the back of her throat like a hot coal and burned all the way down.

"Are you alright?" The doctor asked.

"Fine," Stevie choked out between coughs. "Strong stuff."

He chuckled. "Why don't I have the rest of that," he said, taking her glass from her gently.

As Stevie cleared her throat - relieved to find the lining still intact - Doctor Erskine drained her glass and his own in a few quick gulps, winked at her conspiratorially, and left with the bottle.

* * *

><p>They left at sunset in separate cars - Stevie with Agent Carter and Doctor Erskine with the Colonel. Agent Carter told Stevie that they would drive different routes to their destination to throw off potential followers. As to where they were going, Agent Carter wouldn't tell.<p>

"You'll know it when you see it," was all she said. She also said the drive would take all night and Stevie was free to sleep if she wanted to.

"I don't think I can," Stevie said. "Got the jitters, I guess."

"Me too," said Agent Carter. She was driving the car herself. When Stevie asked her about it she said she had started out as a driver - shuttling officers around - and that she had developed a taste for it. "Driving relaxes me," she said.

"Is that how you met all those important people you convinced to let you join the army?" Stevie asked.

"Ah," said Agent Carter. "Well reasoned. Yes, I did use the opportunity to try to convince the higher-ups that my skills were better suited to field work. Mostly they just gave me the brush off." She smiled at Stevie, "You'll never guess who finally gave me my chance."

Stevie shook her head.

"It was Colonel Phillips," Agent Carter said.

"No!" Stevie replied. "He seems so - disapproving. Of everything."

Agent Carter nodded. "The Strategic Scientific Research division was just getting started and he was its American liaison. They had recently secured the support of Howard Stark - you know, the inventor?"

Stevie nodded. How could she forget the World Expo and the tuxedo girls?

"Even so, They were scrambling for funds, for personnel. I found out that they needed an operative for an urgent mission, someone who could speak German without an accent."

"And let me guess," said Stevie. "You can."

"_Natürlich_," she said. "No one wanted to give up one of their people for an operation with so little chance of success run by a division no one had heard of, but I was able, and available, so Colonel Phillips was forced to send me or give up."

Stevie was eaten up by curiosity. "What was the operation? If it's not classified, I mean."

"Not anymore" said Agent Carter, and seemed to deliberate with herself before grinning. "Why not? I don't get many opportunities to toot my own horn. And telling you will keep me from falling asleep at the wheel."

* * *

><p>Interlude - November, 1940 - Castle Kaufmann - The Bavarian Alps<p>

* * *

><p>Castle Kaufmann brooded above her as Peggy Carter negotiated the hairpin turns of the mountain road. The manor she grew up in had been quite large, but Castle Kaufmann was a mad medievalist's fantasy of turrets and colonnades, with almost 200 rooms. In its heyday it would have housed the Kaufmann family and their many servants, but now it was the home and base of operations for Johann Schmidt - the head of the Nazi scientific research program known as Hydra - and the prison where he held his captive scientist, Doctor Abraham Erskine. Peggy had reached the intricate wrought iron gate that marked the beginning of the long, curving cobblestone drive. A young, bored, SS officer leaned against the wall of the gatehouse.<p>

"Hello, Gunter," called Peggy.

The young man's face brightened. "Eva!" he said, sauntering up to her lowered window. "Did you have any trouble getting to town? I don't like how they make you scramble up and down that goat path they call a road, running errands for them."

"It's no trouble at all," she said. "I like the drive." Karl, the chauffeur, had been happy to find that the new maid could handle a car - he was getting on in years, and with his arthritic knees, trips to town were both painful and dangerous. It suited Peggy just fine - while "Eva" the maid ran errands, Peggy could make arrangements with her contacts in the village.

"You're so modern, Eva." Gunter smiled at her. "Did you bring me a gift from the village? If you did not, I will accept a kiss in exchange for opening the gate."

Peggy giggled girlishly and suppressed the urge to run over his foot. "Of course I brought you something. Close your eyes."

Gunter obediently closed them, and Peggy pulled a treasure out of the parcels and bags on the passenger seat - a perfect, pink apple. "Now, open."

Gunter's joy was childlike. "You're a magician!" He cried, seizing the fruit and kissing it. "Where did you get it?"

"A magician never reveals her secrets," Peggy said, mysteriously, and a grinning Gunter waved her through the gate.

It was easy enough - grocers and bakers liked having a pretty young girl to listen to them and sometimes help them around the shop. And with little treats like this, she could make sure that Gunter never found what she was really carrying - under the hams and sacks of potatoes she had brought in extra sets of clothes, false moustaches, forged ID papers, and everything else she would need to smuggle Doctor Erskine to safety. Now all she needed was the right moment - the chance to get him out of the castle unseen. So far, though, she hadn't even been able to talk to him - the Doctor was shuffled between the laboratory and his rooms under guard.

Peggy handed the car over to Karl at the garage and hauled the sacks and boxes into the castle, rejecting the aging chauffeur's gallant offer to help. It wouldn't do for him to see her hide one of her parcels behind a hidden panel in the wall of the mudroom, just inside the servants' entrance. By the time she turned twelve, Peggy had found all the secret passages and priest holes in her family's manor, and it hadn't taken her long to find this gem - a servant's staircase running up the wall from the ground floor to the master suite. When Peggy had found it, it had been thick with dust, unused perhaps for decades. It was the perfect place to store her contraband, and, hopefully, the perfect escape route for herself and Dr. Erskine when the time was right. Peggy hung up her coat and dusted off her black dress and white apron carefully before bringing the rest of the packages to Ingrid, the cook.

"Oh, thank you, dear," Ingrid said as she entered, surrounded as usual by baked goods and clouds of fragrant steam. "You're an angel, going shopping for me on what should be your half holiday."

"No trouble," Peggy said with a smile. Servants were the best source of information in a large house, and a little help could win lasting loyalty. She lowered her voice. "How is...he...today?"

The servants talked about Johann Schmidt like this, indirectly and with fear. Schmidt had gained possession of Castle Kaufmann recently, rumor had it, by murdering Graf Ernst Kaufmann in a military coup that had also gotten him control of Kaufmann's Special Weapons division. The servants, in a display of feudal loyalty, hated him immediately - why, Schmidt, that _Saupreiẞ_, wasn't even Bavarian! - but those who had complained loudest had disappeared overnight, leaving no trace. After that, the other servants kept their complaints to themselves.

Ingrid shook her head. "He's in a black mood," she said, whispering, as if Schmidt could hear her through the thick stone walls. "Very bad. I think his 'guest' is giving him trouble again."

Peggy tutted sympathetically. Ingrid frowned. "And, on today of all days, Heike is ill. I was just about to take his supper up myself, but…"

Ingrid was, like any respectable cook, a large woman of a certain age, and the many flights of stairs between the kitchen and Schmidt's might as well be Mount Everest.

"I'll do it," said Peggy, trying not to sound eager. She had gleaned as much information on Schmidt as she could, but with him shut up in his study or badgering Doctor Erskine in the lab, she hadn't had much opportunity. Ingrid praised her lavishly and promised her an apple turnover upon her return.

Schmidt's study was on one of the castle's higher floors. The hall leading up to it was lined by tall windows that offered a spectacular view of the snow-covered peaks outside - and a freezing draft from the November wind that seeped in through every gap. The guard outside the study door was not young or smiling like Gunter. One of Schmidt's personal guards, his face was as blank as a carved mask.

"Supper for Herr Schmidt," she said, eyes downcast, and he let her in.

Peggy entered cautiously, but Schmidt was not inside. She heard voices coming from behind an inner door - a study within a study? Peggy supposed it made sense in a building as baroque and over-designed as Castle Kaufmann. The study was large, with floor-to-ceiling shelves on two walls and mullioned windows on the third. A fire roared in the huge fireplace, to limited effect, and a heavy wooden table filled the center of the room. Peggy carefully set her tray on it so that she could look around. The shelves had once held the Kaufmann family library, but many of those volumes had been removed to make room for Schmidt's personal collection - tomes in some languages Peggy didn't know and some she didn't even recognize. One looked like it had been written in runes. The table itself was covered in maps - some old, some new - marked with circles, arrows and annotations in red pen. The maps were all of Nordic countries; Denmark, Norway, Finland; and it looked to Peggy as if Schmidt were trying to correlate locations on the old ones with modern towns and cities. Peggy shifted a map aside and saw that Schmidt had left a book underneath it, a leather-bound volume, so old its pages were vellum instead of paper. The book was open at an illustration, still stunningly bright despite the book's obvious age - a man with one eye holding a small blue box, beams of light emerging from it to strike cowering figures below. The illustration seemed to shift and move as she looked at it, the script around its border coiling and uncoiling like a snake. Peggy blinked.

_The fire must be playing tricks with my eyes_, she thought. The voices behind the door grew louder.

"You are stalling, Doctor." That was Schmidt's voice, cold and dangerous. Doctor? Could he be speaking to Doctor Erskine?

_Now's my chance_.

Peggy tore the corner off an already battered map, and jotted a note with Schmidt's red pen.

_I am an Allied agent. We are arranging your escape. Be ready._

She crumpled the note and held it loosely in her palm, then moved silently to stand just outside the door.

"I am not lying to you, Herr Schmidt," said a softer voice that was probably Dr. Erskine. "The serum is not ready. It would be violation of my oath as a physician to allow you to use it as it is now."

"Is that so?" Schmidt said. "How very...ethical of you." His voice became even more menacing. "But I know of several doctors who do not share your...scruples. Doctors like Arnim Zola. You remember him? You were colleagues, I am told."

Peggy heard the measured tread of Schmidt's boots, and imagined him circling Doctor Erskine like a tiger closing in on its prey.

"Like you, Doctor Zola is studying the limits of human potential...of human...endurance, shall we say. I'm sure he would enjoy getting reacquainted with you. Perhaps he could also meet your wife and daughters. Such exciting research Doctor Zola is doing."

"Please…" Doctor Erskine said, his voice thick with fear. "I swear to you, I am working as hard as I can, day and night. The serum will be ready soon. Please...don't harm my family."

"You have had many months to work, with the best equipment the Reich can supply," Schmidt continued. "Perhaps what you require is a deadline, yes? Some motivation? You have until this Friday. Then, I will test the serum, and if it is not what I require...you and Zola will have a little reunion."

The booted steps grew louder, and Peggy barely jerked back before the door opened and Schmidt himself appeared. He was a tall, lean man, with a high forehead, a face lined in a perpetual frown, and cold blue eyes. Those eyes found Peggy, and he moved like a striking serpent to grasp her around the wrist.

"Listening at keyholes, _fräulein_?" Schmidt asked, forcing her to walk backward until she bumped up against the table. "Hear anything of interest?" His grip on her wrist was painful. He did not look at her like an angry employer confronting a servant, but like someone considering a troublesome fly, wondering if it was worth the trouble and mess to crush it.

"I was bringing your supper, Herr Schmidt," she said. She didn't have to pretend to be afraid of him. There was something inhuman about the man. "I was about to knock, but it sounded like you were arguing."

Peggy played up her fear and allowed her hand to tremble. Schmidt wouldn't look at her too closely if she was just another terrified servant. "Please," she said, "you're hurting me."

Doctor Erskine had emerged from the inner room and strode quickly to stand next to them. "There is no need for this," he said softly. "You don't have to hurt her to make a point. Look how frightened she is."

Schmidt looked from Peggy to the Doctor and chuckled, a disturbing sound, devoid of mirth. "How gallant the doctor is," he said. "But I can be gallant as well. And I keep my word." He released Peggy and she collapsed against the table, using the motion to slip her note into Doctor Erskine's coat pocket.

"Get out, both of you."

Peggy stayed in character and did what Eva the maid would do. She turned and fled.

* * *

><p>The intervening days passed in a blink and then it was Friday. Peggy was certain she hadn't slept more than few hours since Monday - whether the test went well or badly, this was the moment. Peggy had to get Doctor Erskine out of the castle today. All her supplies were ready - maps, electric torches, changes of clothes, food - she had even smuggled in a revolver - but she hadn't been able to communicate with Doctor Erskine at all. With the threat of Arnim Zola hanging over his head, he lived in the lab full-time. She only hoped he had read her message.<p>

Johann Schmidt had spent the day closed up in his study - presumably poring over his old maps and strange books. Peggy had spent the day in a state of high alert and now she was practically vibrating. She found every excuse she could to hover outside the study, dusting already spotless knick knacks. When she came up with an arrangement of dried flowers for the decorative crystal vase - for the second time that day - she saw Gunter slouching outside the door. As always, he greeted her with a smile.

"Eva!" He said melodramatically. "Why are you bringing these dried flowers when you yourself are like the freshest blooming rose?"

"Gunter," Peggy said with mock surprise. "They let you in the house?"

"Klaus is ill," Gunter said - not sadly; there was no love lost between the two. "Food poisoning." He snickered. "He's been on the toilet all day."

"No!" said Peggy. She was not at all surprised, really, because she was the one who put him there - laxatives stolen from Ingrid's supply and snuck into his morning coffee. When the moment for her escape finally came, she would rather be up against smiling, smitten Gunter than the emotionless Klaus. And if Gunter was standing around outside the study…

_The doctor is in there with Schmidt,_ Peggy thought. It felt like an electric charge was running through her. After the months of infiltration and preparation, the time had come_._

"No, I am begging you!" Doctor Erskine's voice shouted from behind the door. "You must not! You do not know what it will do!"

Schmidt's voice replied, but through the thick door it was impossible to tell what he was saying. Gunter frowned and put his hand on the doorknob - he seemed to be debating whether to open the door and risk Schmidt's displeasure. Peggy glanced at the heavy crystal vase and wondered if this was the moment to take Gunter down. Her thoughts were interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream. It came from behind the study door, a cry of absolute agony. Peggy had heard that sound before - from the burn victims at the manor.

Gunter threw open the door. Doctor Erskine stood with his hands braced on the heavy table, staring in horror. Inside the study, Schmidt was in a leather armchair, one of his sleeves rolled up. He had injected himself with the serum. He convulsed and writhed, clenching and unclenching his fists, all the while screaming, howling as if he was being burned alive. His face looked strangely melted, and as Schmidt clawed at it, his skin peeled away like a tattered mask. Peggy could see something wet and red beneath. Gunter cursed loudly. Peggy grabbed Doctor Erskine by the arm and dragged him out the room, Gunter slamming the door behind them.

"What...the _hell_?" Gunter looked back at the door. The horrible screaming was still coming from behind it, on and on. "I….I have to do something….I have to call someone."

If he did, Peggy's opportunity would be lost. She had to act now.

"His face!" She screamed hysterically. "Did you see it? Horrible, so horrible!" She put her hands over her eyes and sobbed, shaking.

Gunter took her by the shoulders. "Eva, it's all right, we'll get someone…" Peggy stepped back and punched him right in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. As he tried to come back to his feet, she took the crystal vase with its dried flower arrangement and broke it over Gunter's head. Doctor Erskine gaped at her.

"Come on!" She said, taking his hand. "They'll be here any minute!" Someone, somewhere, would have heard Schmidt's screams, which were now accompanied by an enormous crashing sound - as if the bookshelves or even the massive table were being overturned.

Peggy pulled Erskine down the corridor, past the row of high windows and around the corner. There was a molding on the last window frame decorated with a carved grapevine, and when Peggy pressed one of the grapes, a panel swung open in the wall, revealing a dark passageway. She pushed Doctor Erskine into it and closed the panel behind them. Not a moment too soon - there was the sound of booted feet and shouting in the corridor outside. She and the doctor stood on a small landing of the servant's staircase she had found. Holding Doctor Erskine's hand in the dark, she led him down the stairs as swiftly and silently as she could, until they reached the bottom, where she had combined her supplies into two fat rucksacks. Peggy pulled her .38 out of one of the bags and gave the other to doctor Erskine, who was wide-eyed and gasping.

"Stay calm, doctor," she whispered, as soothingly as possible. "We're almost out. Do you have everything you need?" All he had were the clothes on his back and a leather bound notebook.

"This is everything," he said, clutching the notebook to his chest. "All my notes. My work."

Peggy nodded. "Good."

The last door of the secret stair opened into the mudroom directly off the servant's entrance; from there it was a quick walk across the gravel drive to the garage. Peggy hoped that Karl the chauffeur would be in the kitchen, drinking coffee and flirting with Ingrid, but as she crept into the garage she heard him humming to himself. He always hummed and sang when he polished the cars. Sometimes he talked to them, too, as if they were the horses the garage used to hold when it had been a stable. Peggy sighed and stepped forward. Karl looked up from where he was buffing a sky blue Alpha Romeo.

"Eva!" he said, smiling. "What brings you out…" and then he saw the gun in her hand.

"Sorry, Karl," Peggy said. "We're going to need the car."

* * *

><p>They sped down the mountain road as quickly as Peggy could go without sending them over the edge. Karl's look of confusion and betrayal had pained her, but that was the nature of intelligence work, she supposed. You betrayed some to save others.<p>

"So," Doctor Erskine said. "I take it your name isn't Eva?"

"Peggy Carter," she replied, dropping the German. "Strategic Scientific Reserve."

"British?" Doctor Erskine, asked. "I wouldn't have guessed. Your accent is flawless."

Gravel flew from the wheels of the Alpha Romeo as Peggy brought them around one of the road's sharp turns. Doctor Erskine held onto the dashboard, looking a little green.

"I know that we are fleeing for our lives," he said. "But could we perhaps go a little more carefully?"

"Don't worry, Doctor," Peggy said, bringing the car to a sudden stop. "We'll be going much more slowly now. Help me push."

Together, they shoved the Alpha Romeo over the edge of a steep embankment and watched it tumble down the slope into the river below. _Sorry, Karl_, Peggy thought again. It had been a beautiful automobile, and lovingly maintained - but leaving it on the road would draw too much attention, and give pursuers too much direction for their search. Peggy and the Doctor left the road and entered the forest, stopping to change clothes once the trees hid them from the street. Peggy traded her maid's uniform for a pair of trousers and a large wool coat, her brown braid tucked up under a cap. Doctor Erskine had changed into a similar ensemble. With some false moustaches, they would look like a father and son coming back from a hunt - at least, from a distance.

That night, they stayed in an abandoned shepherd's cottage. In the next few days they made their way into Switzerland hidden in a cargo train, then passed through occupied France, moving from one Resistance cell to another. Finally, they were taken to England in the hold of a smuggler's boat, where they were received by Colonel Phillips and inducted into the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

* * *

><p>"Wow," said Stevie when Peggy's story was done. The car was a bubble of light floating on top of the black and gray landscape. "That is amazing. Really, really amazing."<p>

"Thank you," said Peggy. Another car passed them, sending pools of light and shadow sliding over her face.

"After tomorrow…" Stevie started. "After...the procedure...do you think I could do that? Could I do work like you?"

"I don't see why not," said Peggy. "They'll probably want to run some tests, but after that they'll put you to work, I'm sure. You're clever and brave - you would be a great asset in the field."

"Brave?" Stevie laughed. "You snuck a man out of Germany under Hitler's nose!"

"You jumped on a grenade," Peggy countered.

"Anyone could have done that," Stevie muttered.

"But no one did, except you."

Stevie was grateful the car was dark because she was blushing to the roots of her hair.

"Well...I guess," said Stevie.

They drove in silence for a moment.

"I have a question about your story," said Stevie.

"What's that?"

"What happened to the doctor's family?"

"Ah," said Peggy, frowning. "That didn't end so happily."

* * *

><p>From England to New York they all flew first-class on one of Howard Stark's transatlantic seaplanes. True to form, the millionaire-playboy-industrialist had stocked it with enough champagne for three times their number, but Doctor Erskine wasn't interested in celebrating. The entire journey he had been consumed with worry for his wife and daughters, certain that Johann Schmidt would have them killed in retaliation for his escape. He had told Peggy about them - his wife, Greta, had been one of his students when he taught biology at Frederick William University in Berlin. Her parents had not approved of their marriage because of his age - and because he was Jewish and she was not. His two daughters were ten and twelve years old.<p>

After a week in New York, Peggy received a telegram from London - _the_ telegram, the one she had been dreading since she asked her network to search for Greta Erskine. Despite Colonel Phillips' offer to accompany her, she took it to the doctor's apartment in Queens and read it to him herself. Peggy's contact had found records of Greta and the girls in a camp called Dachau. In 1937, an outbreak of typhus had swept through the camp, killing hundreds of prisoners - among them, Greta and the girls. Doctor Erskine listened to her without expression, nodding as she spoke.

"Schmidt knew?" he asked. "For three years, he knew?"

"Yes," Peggy said. "He kept it from you so you would keep working for him. Without the threat to your family, he would have had no hold over you." She felt like she should say something comforting, but how can you comfort someone whose whole life had been ripped away in an afternoon?

"I never knew what Greta saw in me," Erskine said. "I was so much older than she was, so much less...glamorous. And I brought her so much trouble." He took off his glasses carefully and set them on the table. "And now, I never will know."

He put his head in his hands and sobbed. Peggy sat next to him with her hand on his shoulder and felt more helpless than she had in her entire life.

* * *

><p>Stevie listened somberly. The war had barely touched her life, yet so many good people had been hurt by it already. How many more would have to pay the price before it was finally over?<p>

Despite her nerves, and her serious train of thought, Stevie found herself nodding off. When she awoke, her glasses were digging into the side of her face, the sun was shining, and they were driving through Brooklyn, of all places.

"Hey," Stevie said, straightening her glasses. "I know this neighborhood." She pointed at an alley. "That's where I stopped Johnny Shotsman from chucking rocks at a stray cat. He threw me in...that dumpster. Right there."

Peggy chuckled. "I told you that you'd know where we were going."

She pulled up in front of a store with a sign that said "Antiques" in fading yellow. "Come on," she said. "We're here."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: Thanks for reading, everyone! I'm so happy that you enjoy this little story that I made. :-)<strong>

**T****hanks are also due to my sister, PhD student in German history (who goes by Hey Gal on the Something Awful forums) for giving me the term ****_Saupreiẞ_****, and explaining how Bavarians hate non-Bavarians. And, yes, that is an Asgardian book in Schmidt's collection, like the one seen in ****_Thor: The Dark World_****, which also had moving illustrations.**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - June 23, 1943

* * *

><p>Stevie checked her reflection in the rearview mirror and tried to smooth her hair. She had a huge sleep crease running down one side of her face. She sighed. <em>I will go to meet my destiny looking like something the cat dragged in, <em>she thought. As for Peggy, after a quick touch up of her powder and lipstick, she looked as fresh as she had ten hours ago - her dark brown hair still somehow in perfect waves. _How does she do that?_ Stevie wondered as she stepped out of the car.

The store where they had stopped looked like any number of antique stores along this street - the windows full of old toys and dusty furniture - but inside there was a closet whose back panel opened into a long, white hallway. _Just like a spy novel, _Stevie thought. At the end of the corridor, a stone-face MP opened a set of double doors, and she and Peggy stepped through onto a catwalk overlooking a large, circular chamber - from spy fiction into science fiction.

The walls were lined with banks of blinking, beeping machines attended to by squad of men in white lab coats. In the center of the room, a large, open, metal pod stood on a raised platform, looking to Stevie like a very small spaceship. _Or a very fancy coffin_, she thought. She tried to swallow and found her mouth was suddenly dry. It was hard to believe this whole set-up was for her, that within minutes, she would be transformed. Or not. _Or dead_, whispered a traitorous little voice inside her.

Peggy and Stevie descended into a swirl of activity. Colonel Phillips was shaking hands with a smiling man in an expensive suit. Doctor Erskine was talking to a pair of nurses. The lab-coat men were reading dials and calling out numbers to a man whose sleek, black hair and pencil moustache made him look just like Howard Stark.

_Wait,_ Stevie thought. _That _is _Howard Stark. _Peggy _had_ told her he was working on the project, but it was still a bit surprising to see him here. In this environment - sleeves rolled up, frown of concentration creasing his forehead, surrounded by machines rather than chorus girls - Stevie could believe that he was a real inventor and not just some rich dilettante. She thought he looked better here in a knitted vest and shirtsleeves than he had looked strutting around on stage in that spiffy tuxedo.

Behind a white folding screen, Peggy helped Stevie exchange her Marinette uniform for some loose, pajama-like trousers and a white T-shirt. Stevie was glad Peggy was with her as she walked across the room to the pod - she felt small and exposed in the baggy pajamas, with all the scientists and men in suits watching her and muttering to each other. When she reached the pod, Stevie handed Peggy her glasses.

"Watch these for me, will you?" she said.

Peggy nodded, serious and silent. _Wow, even Peggy's nervous,_ Stevie thought. The thought was not reassuring.

A solemn Doctor Erskine helped Stevie step into the pod and lean back against the leather headrest. Three sets of pads were pulled into place around her - one set on her shoulders, one on her abdomen, and one on her thighs. She had a sudden memory of riding a roller coaster at Coney Island with Bucky - the padded bar descending over her chest. As she recalled, Bucky had enjoyed the experience much more than she had.

"Comfortable?" The doctor asked softly. Up close, he looked like he hadn't slept any more than Stevie had - his eyes were bloodshot behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and his greying fringe of hair was even more disheveled than usual.

"It's a little big," Stevie said. Erskine smiled and took a stethoscope out of his coat pocket. "Hey," she continued, as he checked her pulse, her breathing. "How was the rest of that schnapps?"

"I had a little more than I should have," he said, ruefully. "We'll stick to coffee next time." He put his stethoscope away. "How are your levels, Mr. Stark?"

"Levels at one hundred percent," Stark replied, with a rakish grin. "We may dim half the lights in Brooklyn, but we are ready."

Erskine nodded. "Good." He turned to Peggy, who was still standing by the pod, holding Stevie's glasses. "Agent Carter, don't you think you'd be more comfortable in the booth?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Sorry." She gave Stevie a quick, brittle smile and left to find a seat in the glassed-in booth that overlooked the lab. Stevie wished that she hadn't gone.

Someone handed Doctor Erskine a microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said to the assembled crowd of officers, politicians and scientists. "Today we take not another step towards annihilation, but the first step towards the path to peace."

He pointed at a cart that one of the nurses had pushed up next to him, holding several large vials of blue liquid, as well as his brown, leather notebook. "We begin with a series of micro-injections into the subject's major muscles. The serum infusion will cause immediate cellular change. Then, to stimulate growth, the subject will be saturated with Vita Rays."

This was the most information Stevie had yet heard about the process, and it didn't sound too terrifying. Her heart hadn't gotten the message, though; it was galloping along in her chest like it was trying to escape. Doctor Erskine handed the microphone to an aide and the nurses slotted the vials into a part of the pod that Stevie couldn't see. The doctor began counting down.

"Serum infusion beginning in five, four, three, two...one."

Twelve large-bore needles punched into her at once, six on a side, in a line running from her thighs to her waist. Stevie hissed a breath in through her teeth.

"Now, Mr. Stark!" Erskine shouted.

The pod closed around Stevie, sealing her in like a sardine in a can. The noise of the lab cut off and the sound of her own rapid breathing filled the tiny chamber. She felt woozy and feverish, and the injection sites along her thighs were stinging and burning. The pads securing her began to buzz with energy.

"That's ten percent," Stark called from outside the pod.

"Twenty percent." The buzzing increased in pitch. Stevie's bones began to hum in resonance.

"Thirty." The hum was in her skull, in the roots of her teeth. The pod smelled like the air after an electrical storm - sharp and chemical.

"That's forty percent. All signs are normal." Light began to fill the pod, brighter and brighter, turning Stevie's vision red through her closed eyelids.

"That's fifty percent." She clenched her jaw and tasted metal. Her breath came in hitched gasps.

"Sixty." Stevie felt hot, hotter even than the time she had caught scarlet fever. Sweat was pouring off her, sticking her shirt to her back.

"Seventy." Stevie was burning up from the inside out. Her bones were red hot. Her blood was boiling. Her clenched jaw wrenched open in a scream.

"Stephanie!" Doctor Erskine was shouting. Someone was pounding on the outside of the pod. "Stephanie!"

"Shut it down!" That was Peggy. She sounded shrill and terrified. "Turn it off, Mr. Stark!"

_Not now. _Stevie thought, through the pain, tears streaming down her face. _Not after everything. _She gathered all her willpower to form the scream into words.

"Don't!" She cried, hoping they could hear her over the still-increasing noise of the machine. "I can do this! Let me do this!"

"Eighty...Ninety!" Stark's voice continued from outside the pod. Stevie didn't have breath to scream anymore. She was being unmade, dissolved by the light, the heat, the supersonic whine. From somewhere beyond pain, she heard Stark call out triumphantly.

"That's one hundred percent!"

The pod unsealed with a hiss, and Stevie became aware of herself again. The burning heat was fading into a body-wide tingling, like her arms and legs had all fallen asleep at the same time. The light was dimming; the whine quieting. Stevie was taking huge gulps of air - but her breath wasn't catching in her chest the way it always had before. She slowly opened her eyes - to see Doctor Erskine and Peggy staring at her with matching looks of awe. After a moment, she realized they were staring _up_ at her. Had the pod lifted her during the procedure? She tried to step down, only to find there was no down. Her bare feet were touching the floor, and she still towered a head above Peggy and the doctor. A quick bolt of vertigo twisted through her, as if she had missed the bottom step on a staircase.

"Son of a bitch," Colonel Phillips said from somewhere, and then the room was full of whoops and cheers as the watchers from the booth ran down the stairs to get a closer look.

"How do you feel?" Peggy asked.

Stevie blinked down at her and tried to adjust her glasses, except Peggy was still holding them.

"Taller," she said.

Stark was gaping at her with his mouth open. As she noticed him, he reached out and squeezed her bicep experimentally.

"Do you mind?" she asked.

He snatched his hand back. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed. Stevie realized she was a few inches taller even than he was, and nearly giggled. _Bucky is not going to believe this when he gets back!_

"We did it," she said to Doctor Erskine.

He nodded. His eyes were glittering with tears. "We did it."

Then the booth exploded.

* * *

><p>Stevie ducked and threw her arms over her head as a red-orange fireball rained shards of glass on everyone in the room. The uniformed officers drew their sidearms immediately, looking around to try to find the source of the blast. But there was one man without a uniform who had drawn a pistol - a dark-haired man with a prominent nose, wearing a pale suit. He wasn't looking up at the booth like the rest; he was looking straight at Doctor Erskine, and, as Stevie watched uncomprehendingly, he shot the doctor twice in the chest.<p>

More shots rang out, ricocheting off the staircase; a nurse screamed, Peggy shouted, and Stevie barely caught the doctor before he fell, a red stain blooming on his white coat.

_Stop the bleeding_, she thought, and pressed her hand against the wound. There was a horrible rasping gurgle as the doctor struggled to breathe. _There's so much blood_ _I can't stop it oh God I can't..._

Doctor Erskine was staring fixedly into Stevie's eyes. His lips were moving, and she leaned down to hear what he was saying.

"Remember…" a painful whisper. He clutched her hand with surprising strength. "Mercy...compassion." He was panting now, each breath shallower than the last.

"Don't try to talk," Stevie said. She was going to say - "It'll be alright," but before she could form the words, Doctor Erskine's eyes focused on something far away from her.

And he shuddered.

And he went horribly limp.

And he...he….

_This can't be happening,_ thought Stevie. _We did it. It's his greatest triumph. This can't be real._

Everyone else seemed to be moving slowly and silently, as if underwater, hands flapping and jaws moving without meaning. At once, Stevie realized three things, with perfect clarity:

Doctor Erskine was dead.

His notebook was missing from the steel cart where it had been a moment ago.

The man in the pale suit was gone, and Peggy had gone after him alone.

Stevie sprang up the stairs three at a time on her new, long legs. She burst through the secret door and out of the antique shop just in time to see Peggy standing in the middle of the street, firing her service revolver at a taxi that was heading straight for her - a taxi driven by the man in the pale suit, the man who had shot Doctor Erskine. What happened after that, Stevie would always remember as a series of snapshots, disconnected moments in time: The wind of the car's wake on her back as she tackled Peggy out of the way. Her legs pumping like tireless pistons as she chased down the speeding taxi and leapt onto its roof. The red smear of Doctor Erskine's blood that she left on the taxi's yellow body as she clung to it with all her new-made strength, the driver veering from side to side in an attempt to shake her off. Throwing herself free when the car hit the curb and flipped over.

Bullets sparking off the road as the man shot at her and she dove behind a parked car for cover.

Her heart lurching when she saw him holding a young girl at gunpoint.

The girl couldn't have been older than nine, her blond pigtails shaking as she sobbed. The man in the pale suit forced her to walk around a corner away from Stevie - towards the riverfront. _If I call his attention,_ Stevie thought. _He'll probably shoot at me instead of the girl. I'm the greater threat._ She wasn't sure how her new body would handle being shot, but she could probably take one bullet at least and still stop him - if he got the notebook to the Nazis it would be a disaster. She padded along the wall silently on bare feet, took a deep breath and stepped around the corner.

"Hey!" Stevie shouted, "Let her go!"

The man in the pale suit turned to face Stevie; his eyes as cold and gray as winter clouds. There was a moment when he wavered, a moment of indecision about whether to turn the gun on Stevie or shoot his hostage. In that moment the girl stopped crying and bit his hand as hard as she could. The man yelled in pain and dropped his gun, shaking the girl off and giving her a vicious backhanded slap before fleeing toward the dock. Stevie ran to help her, but the girl scrambled to her feet, shouting that she was alright, "So get him!"

Stevie sprinted down the dock, arriving just in time to see the man sink into the water at the controls of a sleek black submersible the size of a car. A dive and a few quick strokes were enough to catch the accelerating submarine, and Stevie was rewarded with the look of shock on the man's face before she punched through the glass of the cockpit and hauled him out by his necktie, tossing him onto the dock ahead of her like a landed fish.

"Who the hell are you?" She shouted, taking the man by the lapels of his ruined suit and shaking him. A cut on his forehead was bleeding profusely down the side of his face, and for a second he looked dazed. Then, his aquiline features hardened into an arrogant smirk.

"The first of many," he said, and Stevie wondered if she imagined a slight tremor in his voice, belying his tough expression.

"Cut off one head," he said, a Teutonic accent growing more pronounced as he spoke, "two more shall take its place." He clenched his jaw sharply and Stevie heard something crack. "Hail Hydra," he gasped.

White foam came from the man's mouth as his pale eyes rolled back into his head. He twitched and jerked, and then, for the second time that day, Stevie saw a man die in front of her.

* * *

><p>Stevie sat, wrapped in a blanket, on an uncomfortable metal chair, in yet another room of the secret lab - this one some kind of hanger or garage with an oil-stained concrete floor. Hours had passed since Doctor Erskine's assassination - how many, she wasn't sure. Enough time for her clothes and hair to dry; and enough time for Howard Stark to have the black submarine dragged back to the lab, where he and a small squad of mechanics were single-mindedly dismantling it. Stevie watched him enviously. He was doing something useful, and she, after the nurses drew what looked like enough blood to fill a soup tureen, had been left with a blanket to cover herself - and nothing to do. The blood was necessary, Peggy had explained, because Doctor Erskine's notebook - the only record of his work - was turning to pulp at the bottom of the East River.<p>

"Any hope of reproducing the program is locked in your genetic code." Peggy had said, her melodious voice low and sad. "But without Doctor Erskine, it could take years."

"He deserved more than this," Stevie had answered - it was a ludicrous understatement, but it was all she could think to say.

"If it had to work only once," Peggy had said, taking Stevie's shoulder reassuringly, "he'd be proud it was you."

Peggy may have believed that, but Stevie wasn't so sure.

Since then, Peggy and Colonel Phillips had been closeted away with various bigwigs, discussing how to salvage this awful situation. _Discussing what to do with me,_ Stevie thought. It was cruelly ironic - she could outrun a car and outswim a submarine, and yet, she was still just as useless as she had been yesterday.

A door slammed and Stevie heard an argument coming down the hall, or more accurately, Colonel Phillips' strident, Texan voice, which was an argument all by itself. The Colonel burst into the lab, followed by Agent Carter and the silver-haired man in the expensive suit Stevie had seen the Colonel shaking hands with that morning - a lifetime ago. He wasn't smiling now, as he had been then - he was glaring at the Colonel, who was in the middle of a cutting remark.

"...Answers?" Colonel Phillips said. "Let's start with how a German spy got a ride to _my_ secret installation in _your_ car, Senator." In his mouth, the word "Senator" became an insult. The Colonel turned to Stark. "What do we got here?"

Stark pulled himself from the innards of the submarine and wiped his face with the back of one hand, leaving a streak of oil on his forehead that he didn't seem to notice.

"Speaking modestly, I'm the best mechanical engineer in the country," he said, as matter-of-factly as if he had said what color tie he was wearing. "But I don't know what's inside this thing, or how it works. We're not even close to this technology."

"Then who is?" That was the Senator.

"Hydra." The Colonel bit off the word like it hurt his mouth.

"Hydra?" The Senator asked.

"Hydra is the Nazi deep-science division," Peggy jumped in before the Colonel could speak, probably sensing he'd say something insulting. "It's led by a man named Johann Schmidt, but he has much bigger ambitions."

"Hydra's practically a cult; they worship Schmidt," Colonel Phillips said. "They think he's invincible."

"So what are you going to do about it?" the Senator asked.

Colonel Phillips answered without looking at him. "As of today, the Strategic Scientific Reserve is being re-tasked," he said. "We are taking the fight to Hydra."

Peggy looked surprised. "Colonel?"

"Pack your bags, Agent Carter," he answered. "You too, Stark. We're flying to London tonight."

Stevie stood up and dropped the blanket. This was her chance, maybe her only chance. She had to make the Colonel see how helpful she could be, how much she could do for him, for the war.

"Sir," she said, ducking around the nose of the black submarine to reach the group. "If you're going after Hydra, after Schmidt, I can help you." The dream she had briefly glimpsed on the drive from Camp Lejeune bloomed in her mind. She could be a field agent, like Peggy Carter - collect intel and rescue assets behind enemy lines. Surely he would agree to that?

Colonel Phillips turned to Stevie with a look of contempt so withering it felt like he had punched her in the gut.

"You're an experiment," he rasped. "You're going to Alamogordo."

"But," Stevie stammered, shocked by the vitriol of his rejection. "It worked. The serum worked." She hated how small her voice was.

"I asked for an army," said the Colonel. "And all I got was you. You." He looked her up and down - and dismissed her. "You're not enough."

The Colonel turned and strode away. Stark left with him, casting a lingering look back at the submarine. Peggy stopped and gave Stevie's hand a squeeze. "Don't give up," she whispered, before striding briskly off after the Colonel, heels clicking on the concrete.

Stevie was looking after them, eyes stinging, blinking rapidly and clenching her fists to keep from crying in front of the mechanics, when the Senator cleared his throat. She had almost forgotten he was there.

"With all due respect to the Colonel," he said smoothly. "I think we may be missing the point." He was handsomely middle-aged, his face weathered by time, but still smooth and youthful under his silver hair. Stevie sniffled a little, and wondered what on earth he could mean.

"I've seen you in action, Miss Rogers," the Senator continued. "More importantly, the country's seen it." He pulled a paper out of his jacket - absurdly, her picture was on the front page, under a headline proclaiming MYSTERY WOMAN CAPTURES GUNMAN, SAVES CHILD. Stevie almost didn't recognize herself - barefoot, hair blown back from her face, crouched athletically, one hand outstretched toward the man in the pale suit as he held the blonde girl at gunpoint. _There was a photographer there? _Stevie thought. In the picture, it was clear that she wasn't wearing any..."foundation garments" - as her homeroom teacher called them - under her newly tight T-shirt. Stevie blushed - she still wasn't wearing any; the nurses hadn't found a brassiere that fit her. She folded her arms across her chest and wished she hadn't dropped her blanket across the room.

The Senator was still talking, pointing at the picture. "You don't take a woman like that - a _symbol_ like that - and hide her in a lab." In a credit to his professionalism, the Senator kept his eyes - blue, sincere and imploring as only a politician's eyes could be - firmly on Stevie's face. "Miss Rogers, do you want to serve your country on the most important battlefield of the war?"

"Sir," she said, feeling a lump of emotion in her throat. "That's all I want."

"Then congratulations," the Senator smiled. His teeth were square, white and even as a line of Chiclets. "You just got promoted."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: Thank you all for reading! At last, we get to the transformation! I thought it made more sense for Erskine to have a notebook than to have one random vial of the serum left lying around. <strong>


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 - June through August, 1943

***Thanks for reading, everyone! Thanks are also due to PageLady for the lyrics to the Star Spangled Man with the Plan (altered for Stevie of course). The lyrics are available at PageLady's Wordpress blog.**

* * *

><p><em>*Who's strong and brave, here to save the American Way?*<em>

_Dear Bucky,_

_The Marinettes have given me a placement at last - with the USO! Now, don't look so shocked - I'm not a chorus girl. I mean, can you imagine? I'm just helping backstage with costumes and things. We're setting off on tour, so I'll be sure to send you some postcards._

_Eventually we should go overseas to perform for the troops - who knows? We might even run into you! _

Stevie closed with a sketch of a chorus line of beautiful women in star-spangled costumes, herself at the end - her old self; short, skinny and bespectacled - holding an American flag in each hand.

_P.S. - You'd like it here. The skirts are very short._

_Stevie_

Stevie sealed the letter and dropped it into the mailbox with a sigh. If Project Rebirth weren't still classified, her letters would have been very different. She had actually written them on pages in her sketchbook - secret letters she could never send:

_Dear Bucky,_

_I still have dreams about Doctor Erskine being shot. It all happens the way it did before - I watch him die and can't do anything. Sometimes in my dreams, you're there, and the spy shoots you, too. I hope you're safe. I worry about you so much._

_Dear Bucky, _

_Sometimes I don't recognize myself in mirrors. When you get home, will you recognize me? I spent five minutes this morning hunting around for my spectacles, before I remembered I don't need them anymore._

_Dear Bucky,_

_I miss you._

* * *

><p><em>*Who's here to fight, give her all for what's right, night and day?*<em>

The Senator - Senator Brandt, his name was - had made Stevie the star attraction in a travelling patriotic stage production. It was not a natural fit by any means: despite vastly increased lung capacity, Stevie's singing voice remained breathy and slightly off-key; and the first time she had tried to dance, she kicked a shoe into the mezzanine. There were no costumes for women in her size, so they had to alter a man's costume to fit her - bright blue tights and jacket, with a band of vertical red and white stripes running around her waist and a white star on her chest, finished off with red leather boots and gloves. It wasn't a short skirt and fishnets, but it was, by far, the most ostentatious piece of clothing Stevie had ever worn. The costumer had also presented her with a blue helmet that had little wings on the sides, but Sal - who was her manager, Stevie guessed - had nixed that.

"You got a face like that, you don't cover it up," he had said, making her blush.

Sal - whose snub nose and round, childlike features belied his keen instinct for show business - came to the rescue again with the suggestion that, rather than sing and dance, she just swagger out, deliver a rousing speech, and perform some heroic-looking feats as the chorus girls strutted, kicked and sang a ridiculous tune about her that began "_Who's strong and brave, here to save the American Way?_" and ended by calling her "_The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart_."

Despite all Sal's efforts, Stevie's first performance was almost a disaster. Stevie had never put on her own makeup, and it had to be fixed at the last minute by a sympathetic chorus girl named Doris. With five minutes to call, all the other performers gathered in the wings, she was still in the dressing room, hyperventilating.

"Whoa, whoa, are you okay?" Sal asked, when he found her. "You look a little green around the gills."

"I don't think I can do this," Stevie said. At that moment, she would almost rather be shot at again than go on stage. "I've forgotten everything I was supposed to say."

"Gimme a minute," Sal left and returned moments later hefting a kite-shaped prop shield decorated with the stars and stripes, a common motif for the performance.

"Your speech is taped to the back," he said. "Oldest trick in the book. But look out, it's made of solid oak and it's a little..." he trailed off. When the stagehands had to hang the shield on set, they always complained about how heavy it was; Stevie had lifted it in one hand as though it were made of cardboard.

* * *

><p><em>*Who will campaign door to door for America? Carry the flag shore to shore for America?*<em>

If Stevie hadn't been - enhanced - as she was, she would have found the routine incredibly grueling: four shows a day almost every day, sleeping on trains more often than in real beds. They crossed and recrossed the country, performing in all the places Stevie had heard of but never seen - Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Albuquerque - until Stevie could swagger and smile and say "bullet in the barrel of your best boy's gun" without even consulting the notes still taped to the back of her shield.

For Stevie, the journey was not measured in miles or days, but in the letters, postcards and random sketches she sent Bucky along the way - pictures of her fellow performers, of the Chicago skyline, of the mountain lions and bears she had seen from the train on her way west. The company had been touring for over a month and a half by the time Stevie finally received a letter back.

_Dear Stevie,_ it said, in chicken-scratch handwriting that years of education had been unable to improve.

_I really like getting your letters, please keep sending them even though I can't write back a lot. The guys over here think your pictures are great, especially the ones of chorus girls, ha ha. You'd like it here in _[CENSORED] _- it's full of all that historical stuff you used to read about all the time. Monuments and ruins all over the place. If you were here, you could tell me all about 'em._

_But I'm glad you're not here. War isn't like I thought it would be. Sometimes I feel..._ The next few words were crossed out violently, and Stevie couldn't read them no matter how closely she looked.

_Don't get into trouble while I'm gone. _

_Bucky_

Stevie kept the letter tucked into her sketchbook, pulling it out to read over and over, until she was afraid it would fall apart.

"Is that from your beau?" Doris asked her one day as they were getting ready for yet another show.

Stevie had no idea how Doris had seen her reading the letter, hidden behind her sketchbook, when she herself was putting on eyeliner. Doris was a pretty blonde from the Bronx with a button nose, a mischievous grin and a keen ear for gossip.

"Bucky's not my 'beau'," Stevie said. "We grew up together; he's all the family I've got." She folded the letter carefully and put it back. "He's a sergeant in the 107th."

Doris nodded. "I have three brothers," she said, smiling a little sadly. "A matched set - Army, Navy and Marines."

The other girls chimed in; most of them had someone overseas - a brother, a cousin, a fiance. They saw what they were doing as a way to help the people they loved. A way to keep them safe. Stevie knew that this work was important; she would never tell these women otherwise; but she couldn't help feeling that she was meant for something else.

"Alright, get over here," Doris said, interrupting Stevie's ruminations. "It's time to fix you up. You know," she continued, outlining Stevie's eyes in black pencil, "you should really learn to do this yourself. It isn't hard."

"It isn't hard for _you_," Stevie said. "I follow your instructions to the letter and I still look like a demented clown. And I can't get that darned pencil near my eye without twitching and ruining everything."

Doris chuckled, "Practice makes perfect. Now hush; I'm going to do your lips." She used a little brush to color Stevie's mouth a crisp red. "I should give you homework," she put on a dry, nasal, teacher-y voice. "Lesson one, lipstick. Lesson two, nylons."

The other girls jumped in. They all found Stevie's lack of charm endearingly hilarious.

"Lesson three - walking in high heels!"

"Lesson four - flirting!"

"Why flirt," said Stevie, as Doris pinned her hair back, "When I can just carry a man off under each arm?"

And that, of course, was when the stagehand came to tell them it was five minutes to call.

* * *

><p><em>*She's giving us a head start - The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart!*<em>

Stevie was surprised the first time she saw herself on a recruiting poster, mounted next to a recruiting station in Duluth. Her doppelganger gazed out at passers-by with an enigmatic half-smile; behind her a billowing American flag, and over her head the question "Are YOU a girl with a Star-Spangled Heart?".

"Oh my God, it's you!" Doris shrieked. "What a gas!" She looked from Stevie to the poster a few times, and giggled. "You should take it, just for kicks. Send it to that boyfriend of yours."

"It's military property, I can't just take it," Stevie countered. "And, for the last time, Bucky's not my boyfriend."

"Killjoy," Doris muttered.

After that, Stevie became accustomed to seeing her own face smiling out at her from the strangest places - comic books, trading cards, advertisements. Apparently Senator Brandt had been wheeling and dealing while Stevie was out touring, and had made her into the face of the American war effort without her knowledge. He even got her into film strips and shorts to show before movies - she strode at the head of columns of men, carried soldiers bedecked with ketchup bloodstains, and knocked out German generals with a telegraphed punch to the jaw. It took her ages to remember not to look at the camera while they were filming.

"It ruins the illusion," the director said patiently.

"Sorry," Stevie muttered, and took her mark for what felt like the fiftieth time. At least on stage she only had to do everything once. Well, once per show.

* * *

><p>*<em>Who waked the giant that napped in America? We know it's no one but Captain America!*<em>

One day, Sal hauled Stevie down to his office during a break between shows. Sal's New York office was a repurposed broom closet, but it beat working out of train cars and hotel rooms.

With all the exposure she was getting, Sal said, he had realized she had to have a name.

"I have a name," Stevie told him. "Stephanie Grace Rodgers. Can I go now?" Stevie was standing in the doorway because they wouldn't both fit in the room at the same time.

"Har har," Sal replied. "You're a hero now - you think Wonder Woman would introduce herself as," Here he put on a ridiculous falsetto and batted his eyes, "Stephanie Grace Rodgers?"

"No," Stevie said. "Because her name is Diana Prince. And my voice is not that high!"

"Quiet, I'm thinking." Sal paced as well as he could in the tiny room, basically turning around in place. "Lady Liberty is taken. And you'd have to wear a bedsheet. Liberty Belle?" Stevie groaned. "You're right, no puns...hey, you're a lady reservist right? You have an actual rank?"

"Senator Brandt made me an honorary Captain."

Sal snapped his fingers. "That's it! Captain America! What do you think?"

Stevie shrugged. "Sounds great. Can I go now? Call is in a half hour and I haven't had lunch."

* * *

><p>*<em>She'll tear the Nazis apart! Their evil plans she will thwart! The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart!*<em>

Stevie started to be recognized. People she didn't know would stop her on the street for autographs. After shows, they wanted to shake her hand. She knew she should feel proud, satisfied, but all she felt was frustration buzzing in her chest like a wasps' nest.

_Dr. Erskine didn't die to make me a glorified chorus girl, _she thought as she lay in another narrow hotel bed, unsleeping. _Any actor could do what I'm doing, probably better than me, too. I should be saving lives, not selling war bonds._

But there was nothing she could do, not yet.

So Stevie kept smiling at Senator Brandt, smiling at the audience, at the photographers, smiling, smiling, smiling until she thought her cheeks would crack. And she remembered what Peggy had said to her before she left.

_Don't give up_.

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks everyone! In Chapter 9, Stevie will be in Italy!<strong>

**Historical and Plot Notes: **

Stevie's shield isn't made of steel, because it's ridiculous to waste metal on a stage prop when people are collecting whatever scraps they can scrounge up from junkyards for the war effort. Oak is heavy, solid and can still be used to brain people.

Bucky is writing to Stevie from Sicily. The Allies landed there in July 1943. They didn't make it to mainland Italy until September.

The "Girl With the Star-Spangled Heart" is a real WW2 propaganda poster and can be viewed at the Library of Congress website. The model on the real version looks nothing like Stevie.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 - November 2, 1943 - Italy

* * *

><p>The sky over the camp was a steely gray, low clouds brooding over the makeshift stage. Since Stevie had come to Italy it had rained almost every day, and she had gotten used to sleeping on cots, travelling in jeeps, and always being slightly damp. Stevie looked out at the sea of soldiers' faces that was her audience, searching, as always, for Bucky. He wasn't here either.<p>

"Alright," she said brightly into the round, silver microphone. "How many of you are ready to help me sock ol' Adolf on the jaw?"

It wasn't that Stevie had never had a bad show - especially at the beginning, when she was about as dynamic as a block of wood - but this crowd was beyond apathetic. The soldiers watched her with a silence that was downright hostile.

"Okay," Stevie bolstered her faltering smile. "I need a volunteer."

"We already volunteered," someone called from the back of the crowd. "How do you think we got here?"

Sarcastic laughter rumbled through the crowd like distant thunder. Behind her smile, Stevie felt a tingle of panic.

"Hey," another voice called. "Why don't you do a little dance for us, like the other girls?"

"I don't really…" she began nervously.

"Yeah, sweetheart - show us your stuff!"

"Dance!" Someone shouted, and then the men started chanting. "Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!"

"Fellas…" she stammered. How had she lost control of the situation so quickly? She cast around for some way to make a graceful exit. Bring in the other girls? Did they know any routines other than the "Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart"?

Suddenly, a voice called out stridently over the chanting.

"Show us your tits!"

The men roared. Stevie felt her face redden with embarrassment and anger.

"That is uncalled for…" she began, but Sal stepped between her and the microphone.

"Let's hear it for Captain America!" he said, clapping all by himself. "And now, the Liberty Belles have a special encore, just for you!" He gestured frantically at the wings and the girls ran out to cheers and whistles. Sal put one hand firmly on Stevie's shoulder and steered her offstage.

"Don't worry," he murmured, patting her on the back. "Next time will be better, you'll see. It's just these yahoos."

Stevie sat out the rest of the performance under the backstage tent that protected all their costumes and props, and stayed there in a fine funk while the girls fluttered off and the stagehands got everything ready for the next show. The rain that had been threatening all day finally arrived, and pattered down onto the canvas above Stevie as she sketched, drawing herself over and over - as a chorus girl in a short skirt, as a clown with a painted face, as a trained monkey riding a unicycle.

She had been so excited to travel overseas and help the troops - see them face to face and let them know that what they were doing meant something. She had even entertained the crazy hope that she, like Peggy, would get that one-in-a-million chance and be discovered by some general, chosen for a special secret mission. How absurd it all seemed now - she was more useless than ever. The men held her in contempt.

A familiar, soft, British voice interrupted her moping. "Hello, Stevie."

"Hi, Peggy," Stevie said automatically, and then jerked her head up. "Peggy! Hi!" As if thinking about her had conjured her up, there was Peggy Carter, looking just as polished as she had in New York all those months ago, even if she was slightly dampened. Stevie jumped to her feet and hugged the smaller woman, sketchbook still in one hand.

"What are you doing here?" Stevie asked, releasing Peggy and holding her at arm's length. _And how do you get lipstick and bobby pins in a war zone?_

"Officially, I'm not here at all," Peggy replied enigmatically, taking a seat on a crate of prop missiles. "That was quite a performance."

"Yeah," Stevie said, her brief joy evaporating. She sat down heavily next to Peggy and opened up her sketchbook again. "They really loved me; I could tell."

"I heard you were America's new hope." Peggy said. "How's that going?"

"Bond sales take a ten percent bump in every state I visit," Stevie said, scratching away at the her-as-dancing-monkey picture, trying to keep all the bitterness and envy she felt out of her voice. "And women's recruitment is up five percent nationwide."

"So that was Senator Brandt's idea."

"At least he let me do something," Stevie snapped, glaring at Peggy. "Colonel Phillips would have stuck me in a lab!"

Peggy didn't return Stevie's anger. Instead, she looked sad. "Are those your only options? Lab rat or," she gestured at Stevie's sketchbook, "Dancing monkey?"

Stevie looked away again, chewing on the inside of her lip to keep from retorting. _I'm sorry I couldn't get anything better than a circus act. I'm not smart enough. I'm not you._

Peggy put a hand on her shoulder. "You were meant for more than this," she said softly.

Stevie kept staring out into the rain. A handful of soldiers were walking across the camp, on their way to or from some inscrutable, military task. With her new, improved eyes, she could see their faces clearly, even at this distance. They looked tired, empty, beaten down - as if the rain were dissolving them back into the earth. Her heart ached for them - ached to be able to do something for them.

"They look like they've been through hell," she murmured.

"These men more than most," Peggy replied. "They met Schmidt's forces at Azzano. Of their entire company, two hundred men, only fifty returned. The rest were killed or captured. Your audience contained what remains of the 107th."

Stevie felt like someone had opened up her chest and poured ice water into it.

"The 107th?" she said, her voice a weak puff of air.

"What is it?" Peggy asked. "You look like someone walked over your grave."

"That's my friend...Bucky...that's his unit."

* * *

><p>Peggy had to run to keep up with Stevie as she strode to the command tent. She told Stevie all the information she knew on the way - the men who hadn't been killed in the battle had been taken to Austria. Allied agents had tracked them to a facility near Kreischberg - some kind of factory was their best guess. Prisoners were trucked in; tanks came out. Survivors of the battle reported Hydra using weapons of terrible power - rifles and tanks that fired blue bolts of energy, vaporizing anyone in their path.<p>

Stevie's mind chattered to itself all the way across the camp, a litany of worst-case scenarios. _Bucky's dead. He's been captured. He's wounded horribly, lying in a ditch somewhere, bleeding into the mud. _She shook her head as if trying to shake her thoughts loose. Surely this was all a big mistake, and Bucky would walk up any minute, laughing at her for being so worried.

But he didn't.

In the command tent stood none other than Colonel Phillips, the last person Stevie wanted to see when she was soaking wet and dressed in star-spangled tights. He consulted a piece of paper in his hand through a pair of half-moon spectacles.

"Mrs. Williams," the Colonel dictated to a young aide at a nearby typewriter. "We regret to inform you that your son," He glanced at the paper. "Louis...was killed in action on the twentieth of October...Oh, just continue with the usual."

Colonel Phillips took off his glasses briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose. His hair was grayer than the last time Stevie had seen him, his face more lined. He looked very old, and very tired, and for a moment, Stevie felt a stab of sympathy for him. Then, he saw her, and his face hardened.

"Well," he said. "If it isn't the Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart."

The intervening months had not improved his opinion of her, apparently. _Say whatever you want_, Stevie thought. _Insult me, berate me, I don't care anymore. _There was only one thing she cared about.

"Colonel Phillips," she said. "I need to see the casualty list from Azzano."

"You may be a celebrity, Miss Rodgers, but you don't give me orders." He beckoned, and a nearby MP took Stevie's arm to escort her away. She shook off his hand.

"I just need one name. Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th. Please, sir…" Her voice broke. The MP moved in again, but Colonel Phillips held up his hand to stop him.

"Please tell me if he's alive." Stevie continued. "It's Barnes, B-A-R-"

"I can spell," the Colonel interrupted sharply, but he looked back at her with something approaching compassion.

"I've signed more of these condolence letters today than I care to count," he said, sounding bone-weary. "But the name does sound familiar. I'm sorry."

Stevie nodded. Peggy was patting her back, saying something she didn't hear. _I was so close_, she thought. _A week - two weeks maybe. I would have been able to stop it. I would have been able to stop him from..._she shied away from the thought.

"What about the others?" Stevie asked. "Are you planning a rescue mission?"

"Yeah," The Colonel snapped, sympathy gone from his voice. "It's called winning the war."

"But if you know where they are, why not…" _Why not send someone. Why not send me?_

"They're thirty miles behind the lines, through some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe. We'd lose more men than we'd save." The Colonel's voice was thick with anger and despair. "I don't expect you to understand that, because you're a chorus girl."

The Colonel's contempt would have stung her five months ago, but now Stevie was quietly furious. He wasn't willing to listen to her, wasn't willing to consider her. Well, that was just dandy. She'd rescue the soldiers herself.

"I understand fine," she said.

"Well than understand it somewhere else," he said, turning back to his list of the dead - and his aide at the typewriter, who had watched the entire exchange while looking increasingly uncomfortable. "If I read the posters correctly, you have somewhere to be in thirty minutes."

"Yes sir," she ground out through her teeth, and strode out into the rain again.

* * *

><p>"Stevie," a voice came from behind her. "Stevie!" Peggy had followed her from the command tent, and was trotting briskly to catch up with her. "You're planning something aren't you?"<p>

"Yes," Stevie replied briefly, not slowing down.

"You're planning to break them out."

"Yes."

"What are you going to do," Peggy sounded frustrated, "Walk to Austria?"

"If that's what it takes."

"And what if the Colonel is right, and your friend is dead?"

Stevie stopped and turned to face the other woman.

"You don't know that," Stevie said quietly. "And besides, it wouldn't matter."

The rain fell between them. Peggy's hair was plastered to her face, and she was breathing hard from trying to keep up with Stevie.

"What you said to me earlier," Stevie said. "That I shouldn't give up, that I was meant for more than this. Did you believe it?"

Peggy nodded. "Every word."

"Then don't try to stop me." Stevie turned to enter the backstage tent. There were things she needed - she couldn't raid a prison in her costume, that was for sure.

"I can do more than that," Peggy said, a steely note in her voice. "Meet me at the airfield in five minutes."

* * *

><p>"More" turned out to be an airplane and Howard Stark. Stevie found herself unsurprised to see him here - after all, the last time she had seen Peggy and the Colonel, Stark had been there. It was a natural continuation of their last meeting - broken by a hiatus of five months. Stark's plane was sleek, silver and sporty - very much like Stark himself, who was also sleek and sporty in a brown bomber jacket and white knit turtleneck, still pristine even in all this mud. Peggy had exchanged her skirt and heels for trousers and boots, with a pistol on her belt.<p>

"I hope you're not planning to tell me some nonsense about staying behind," she said as she and Stevie boarded.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Stevie lied.

"Because I am an expert in infiltration and extraction," Peggy continued, handing Stevie a pistol of her own, that she buckled onto her thigh.

"I know that, and believe me I'm glad to have your help" Stevie said. "But won't you be in a lot of...trouble? With Colonel Phillips?"

Peggy snorted. "I'm already in trouble by this point. 'Might as well be hanged for a ewe as a lamb,' as my father used to say. Besides," her face turned serious. "I'm sick of sending men off to die while I stay behind. I don't know how the Colonel stands it."

The sun was sinking as they flew north, glinting off the little rivers and snow-capped peaks below, burnishing the bottoms of the clouds pink and gold. The trio in the plane sat in silence, Stark flying and the women thinking.

* * *

><p><em>After Peggy had run off, Stevie had gone into the backstage tent and thrown a set of men's khaki fatigues on over her costume. She kept the red leather boots, because she doubted her canvas sneakers would be of much use in an Austrian forest. She had unpinned her hair and was braiding it sloppily when Doris burst in.<em>

"_God, I need a smoke," she said, hunting through her things, then, seeing Stevie, she frowned. "What are you doing? We're on in ten minutes, and you've ruined your hair!"_

"_Doris," Stevie had said, finding it unexpectedly hard to speak. "I won't be in the next show." _

_Maybe not any more shows, if she were court-martialed_.

"_There's...something I have to do." _

_Doris had looked at Stevie for a long moment, taking in her change of clothes, deducing what that meant. Doris had always been a sharp one. _

"_You're going to try to play the hero, aren't you?" she said. "You big dummy." _

_Stevie nodded sheepishly. "Tell Sal I'm sorry to leave him in the lurch like this," she said._

_Doris quickly rummaged in a pile of costumery and emerged with the helmet that she wore in one of the numbers - military surplus, painted blue with a white "A" on the front. She reached up to put it on Stevie's head and buckle it under her chin. _

"_Here," she said. "If you're doing what I think you're doing, people might try to shoot you." She gave Stevie a quick hug, her head barely coming to the taller woman's chin. _

"_Be careful, for Christ's sake" she said, then ducked away, dabbing her eyes carefully so as not to smudge her mascara. "I never saw you, ok?" _

_On her way out of the tent, Stevie had seen her shield leaning up against a dressing table, and on a whim, she took it with her. Holding made her feel safer, stronger - it made her feel like Captain America._

* * *

><p>The sun had gone down while Stevie had been thinking. Now they flew in the dark. They were getting close. <em>My first time on a plane, <em>Stevie thought. _And soon I'll be jumping out of it._

"What's the plan?" She asked Stark, speaking loudly to be heard over the roar of the engines. "Where will you be dropping us off?"

"You see those two mountain ranges?" he said, pointing off into the darkness, where the mountains were black shadows against the night sky. "The facility is between them. Gentleman that I am, I'll take you girls right to the doorstep."

Stark reached into a pack on the copilot's seat, producing a palm-sized metal box with an antenna and a button on one end.

"This is your transponder," he said, holding it out to Stevie. "Push the button when you're ready - it'll lead me right to you."

Stevie's hand brushed Stark's as she took the box. As well-manicured as he was, his hand was rough - nicked and callused from all the work he did. He looked into Stevie's eyes and gave her a slow grin, all white teeth and dimples.

"And then," he said a bit more softly, "We can stop over at Lucerne for a quick fondue."

Stevie flushed. Fondue? Was that some kind of…? Was he propositioning her? Right here? In a plane? In front of Peggy?

"Mr. Stark," she said with careful dignity. "I'm not that kind of girl."

Stark looked confused for a second, then chuckled. "No, no, 'fondue' is…"

At that moment, there was a bone-shaking boom and a red-orange flash - anti-aircraft fire.

"We've been spotted!" Peggy yelled, buckling on her parachute.

"Looks like we'll be getting off here" Stevie told Stark as she tucked the transponder in her shirt pocket and pulled her own parachute on. "As soon as we jump, turn this thing around."

He protested, but the next explosion put a neat line of flak punctures through the plane's sleek hull, with a noise like hail rattling off a roof. He changed his mind after that. Peggy pulled the door open and the wind hit Stevie like a slap in the face.

"Ready?" Peggy yelled.

"Am I ever!" Stevie replied - and the two women, one after the other, leapt into the darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks for reading, everyone! <strong>

**Plot note: In this chapter, Peggy goes along to free the prisoners, because she is a trained field agent, so there's no reason not to. I never understood why Peggy, who has more field experience than Steve at this point, would stay behind. Is it a gender dynamic thing?  
><strong>

**Next week - a dramatic rescue!**


	10. Chapter 10

**At last, the big escape scene! Not gonna lie, I was looking forward to this chapter the entire time I was writing. I hope you enjoy it too. :-)**

**Thanks to everyone for following, favoriting, and just reading. You have no idea how much it means to me.**

* * *

><p>Chapter 10 - November 2-3, 1943 - Kreischberg<p>

* * *

><p>The two women crouched beneath the trees, contemplating the blocky, concrete building that squatted in front of them. It was composed of two wings, one larger, with huge bay doors and smokestacks - clearly the factory - the other wing off to the side, probably where the prisoners were kept when they weren't being used as slave labor. Floodlights bathed the facility in harsh white light, leaving the treeline deep in shadow. Peggy and Stevie had circled the building, scouting for the best point of entry, and now they were looking at it - a small door at the rear of the factory wing, close to the trees, watched by a solitary guard. Seeing the lack of security, Stevie could only assume that Hydra hadn't expected anyone to break <em>in<em>.

"What's the plan?" Stevie whispered as quietly as she could. "Sneak in?"

"Stealth would be easier if you hadn't brought _that_ along," Peggy replied, pointing to the star-spangled shield Stevie carried on her back.

"Shields can be very useful in hand-to-hand combat," Stevie said defensively. "And I don't think we would be able to disguise ourselves as guards anyway." She pointed to her own ample chest. "We don't seem the type."

Peggy grinned. "The old washerwoman trick is probably right out as well."

"Here's my idea," said Stevie. "I'll make some noise, lure him out here. Then, you can drop him from behind."

"I like it," said Peggy. "With one alteration - I'll lure him out, you drop him." She held up her hand to forestall Stevie's objection. "You're stronger than I am. More likely to knock him out with one blow."

Stevie hesitated, then nodded. Peggy slipped into the trees without a sound. A minute later, Stevie heard a rustling in the undergrowth. Somehow Peggy managed to make the exact amount of noise someone would if they were trying not to make any noise at all - a slight crunch of dry leaves, the whisper of fabric against branches. The guard at the door looked around, and stepped closer to the trees. Like all the guards they had seen, he wore a full face mask and goggles, which gave him the look of a giant insect.

"_Wer ist da?"_ He called, voice slightly muffled by his mask.

There was another furtive step from Peggy. A branch cracked. The guard raised his machine gun.

"_Ist jemand hier?"_

Stevie stepped out of the shadows on his left side. "_Guten tag,_" she said, and punched him in the face. He dropped like a sack of coal.

Peggy emerged from the trees and gave Stevie a wry look.

"It's all I remember from high school German," Stevie said.

* * *

><p>At first glance, the inside of the factory looked like Stevie would have expected the inside of a factory to look. Machinery of unknown purpose, half-assembled tanks, curved sections of metal that brought to mind rockets and missiles. Then, Stevie saw the...she guessed they were batteries of some sort - circular bundles of cables the size of truck tires, lying on tables and set into the workings of engines. Each bundle was studded with what looked like small glass boxes, boxes that glowed with a strange blue luminescence, like captured starlight. Creeping closer to one of the batteries, Stevie pulled at a blue box and it came free in her hand. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, smooth and cool to the touch, but with a tiny buzz that vibrated in her fingertips.<p>

_Stark will love getting his hands on this_, she thought. She slipped it into her pocket and, with Peggy, continued to advance into the building.

They crept around the perimeter of the factory floor toward the doors that would lead them to the prison, concealing themselves behind large curving sections of tank armor. Stevie felt as edgy as a stray cat, looking around constantly for guards, but the women reached the other side of the factory without seeing anyone. There were four doors, two at ground level, two partway up the wall, accessible by a metal staircase bolted into the concrete. Peggy gestured that she would take the ground floor, and Stevie the stairs.

Stevie drew the pistol Peggy had given her and walked up the stairs as quietly as she could. The door at the top had a glass panel at eye level, and she peered through cautiously into the prison - at her level, a catwalk ran all the way around the large room. The cells were below the catwalk so the guards could look down into them - bare metal and concrete, no beds, no blankets, the men inside huddled together against the chill. A guard came around the corner suddenly and Stevie ducked out of view. When his back was to her, she waved at Peggy and mouthed "_I'm going in._" Peggy nodded.

Stevie waited for the guard to circle the prison. Would she have to shoot him? She looked at the pistol in her hand. _I don't want to kill anyone_, she had told Dr. Erskine long ago, before watching him die. She still didn't want to. Not if there were another way. Stevie put her gun back in its holster. When the guard rounded the corner again, she slipped through the door and dropped him with a haymaker as soon as he turned around.

_Piece of cake_.

She fumbled in his pockets, and - _yes!_ - there was a set of keys. Below her the pale ovals of faces peered up through the metal grating.

"Hi, fellas," she said with her best chorus-girl smile.

"Who are you?" One of them said, voice a blend of hopeful and hostile.

"Um…" Sal had been right. In the middle of such an act of derring-do, she couldn't introduce herself as 'Stephanie Grace Rodgers.'

"I'm Captain America."

* * *

><p>On the ground level, Peggy and Stevie opened the cells with the guard's liberated keys. In every cell, Stevie looked for Bucky, but he wasn't there. When she asked the men, they told her there was some kind of lab on the floor above them. Sometimes prisoners were taken there by the doctor - Zola. Stevie's neck prickled at the name. In Peggy's story, she remembered, Zola had been interested in "the limits of human potential." She wasn't surprised when the men told her that those taken to the lab never returned.<p>

Stevie and Peggy reunited in the middle of the room, the crowd of freed prisoners all around them, hushed but eager.

"What's the plan, Cap?" One of the men asked. He was as tall as Stevie and built like a refrigerator, with a big ginger mustache and a battered bowler hat that bore a sergeant's bars.

"The tanks and trucks are outside the northwest corner," she said. "From there, the treeline is eighty yards away. Capture as many tanks as you can, hit them as hard as you can, and then get the hell out of Dodge."

"My kind of plan," said the man.

"I don't like leaving all this behind us," said Peggy, pointing over her shoulder at the factory.

"You suggesting sabotage?" Stevie asked.

At the word, an exclamation in French came out of the crowd - a small man with a black mustache and disheveled, curly hair pushed himself in front of the rest, delivering an earnest monologue of which Stevie caught about one word in four. Peggy responded fluently, and the man laughed and clapped his hands.

"Luckily, we have an expert in sabotage right here," Peggy said. "Monsieur Dernier worked with the Resistance. Demolitions."

"Okay," Stevie said to the group. "Here's the plan. Agent Carter, take Dernier and any other men who want to go with you. Sergeant..."

"Dugan," said the big man.

"Sergeant Dugan, lead the team going out the front. Agent Carter's team will wait until you engage the guards - that way, they won't be able to come back and defend the factory."

The prisoners murmured as they passed the information from man to man and started to shuffle around into Dugan's group or Peggy's. Stevie turned to go.

"Wait," Peggy said. "Where are you going?"

"To clear the lab upstairs," Stevie said. "There might still be men up there." _Bucky might still be up there_, she thought. If Peggy guessed at Stevie's motivation, she gave no sign.

"By yourself?" She asked, frowning.

Another man stepped out of the group, scruffy, with a patchy beard and a shapeless knit cap. His eyes were almond-shaped and so dark they were almost black. Stevie thought he might be Japanese.

"Take me with you," he said. "I'm a medic - if anyone's hurt up there, I can help. And I can watch your back."

Sergeant Dugan scoffed. "Oh, _you'll _watch her back? Sure you won't stab her in it?"

The shorter man pulled his dog tags out of his shirt and held them up under Dugan's nose.

"I'm from Fresno, _Ace_," he said challengingly.

"Hey," Stevie said, stopping the men in their tracks. "We don't have time for this now. Dugan, take the outside team. Carter, Dernier, take the sabotage team. We only have one chance, so give 'em hell."

They were nodding. _Wow,_ Stevie thought. _They're listening to me. They're doing what I say. Weird. _

She turned to the medic. "What's your name?"

"Morita," he said. "Corporal Jim Morita."

"Alright, Corporal. You're with me."

* * *

><p>Morita led Stevie to the second floor, which was dark, silent, abandoned, and decidedly eerie. They walked down a long, broad corridor - Stevie on the left and Morita on the right - opening each door in turn and shaking their heads at each other as one room after another turned up empty. The corridor ended in a t-junction, and Stevie gestured to Morita that she should take the left path and he the right - meeting back here when they were done. Morita nodded.<p>

Stevie crept down the left path, checking the rooms. Empty. Empty. Empty - wait, there was something on the wall, a map. Stevie paused for a second to look closer. It was a map of Europe, studded with little black flags.

_Interesting_, she thought.

There was no time to spare. Stevie stepped back into the corridor - and froze. Someone was there, at the end of the hall, silhouetted against the light that streamed in through the windows - a short man, carrying a valise, the light glinting off a pair of spectacles. He saw Stevie and broke into a shuffling run. She began to run after him, knowing she could catch him easily - until a voice coming from behind a half-open door brought her up short.

"Sergeant...32557038...Barnes...James Buchanan...Sergeant...32557038…."

Hardly daring to believe her own senses, Stevie pushed the door open. Lying on what looked like a padded dentist's chair, bathed in sickly green light, was - undoubtedly, in the flesh - Bucky Barnes. The surge of relief Stevie felt was so powerful she nearly buckled at the knees, and if the situation were any less dire, she probably would have. She covered the distance between them in two quick steps. Bucky stared blankly up at the light, mumbling his name, rank and serial number over and over, his wrists and ankles strapped down with heavy leather cuffs. Stevie's imagination skittered off in several unpleasant directions.

"Oh my God, Bucky," she said breathlessly. She tried to unbuckle the straps holding him to the chair, gave up, and tore them off. They parted in her hands like paper. "It's me; it's Stevie."

It was like Bucky was coming back from somewhere deep inside himself - his sea-green eyes focused slowly, found Stevie's face, and he smiled so sweetly that it almost broke her heart.

"Stevie," he said, his voice hoarse.

She helped Bucky up from the chair, holding onto his arms to make sure he didn't fall. Out of the green light, she could see the half-healed bruises running down one side of his face, the split lip, the boxer's cut over one eye. Someone had beaten the hell out of him.

_What did they do to you? _

Without thinking she reached out and touched his cheek. He winced and she drew back.

"I thought you were dead," she said, tears stinging at the backs of her eyes.

"I thought you were smaller," he replied, staring at her. He seemed confused, woozy, maybe drugged.

Stevie laughed, but stopped before it could turn into a sob. "Come on," she said, pulling his arm over her shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

When he had hugged her that night at the World Expo, before he left, Bucky had felt strong and solid, like a wall that would always protect her. Now, leaning against her, he felt shrunken, fragile. Stevie could feel his ribs through his tattered shirt, and for an instant she wanted nothing more than to pick him up and carry him all the way back to Brooklyn where he would be safe.

"What happened to you?" he asked as she half helped, half dragged him from the room.

"I joined the Marines," she said.

"Did it hurt?"

He seemed to become more present, more aware with every step they took.

"A little," she lied.

"Is it permanent?"

"So far."

Morita was waiting at the junction with two other men, who looked the worse for wear, but not as bad as Bucky. Seeing them, Bucky stepped away from Stevie to stand on his own, swaying slightly.

"Zola was keeping them in cages, the sick son of a bitch," Morita said. "Barnes, good to see you, man."

The two other men were named Brooks and McDaniel, Brooks a young man who still had acne scars on his cheeks, McDaniel a grizzled father of two. Stevie was shaking hands with them and accepting their thanks when she heard Bucky growl.

"Get your hands off me!"

Morita held up his hands as if calming an injured animal, and no wonder. Bucky - jaw clenched, teeth bared, hands in fists - looked moments away from attacking him.

"Easy, man," the medic said. "Just wanted to make sure you were ok. That's a bad shiner you've got."

"Don't," Bucky snarled. "Don't touch me. Just don't."

"Fellas," Stevie said. They quieted instantly. "Do you hear that?"

Coming up the hall, the smack of boots echoed on the tiled floor. The lab wasn't was abandoned as they thought.

"Go, go go!" Stevie hissed, taking her shield from her back and her pistol from her thigh holster. She pushed the others ahead of her down the hallway - reasoning that, if the short man had vanished, there must be an exit that way.

The men broke into a run as best as they could. The guards began running too; Stevie could hear them getting louder, calling out in German. The men slipped through a door at the end of the hallway, Stevie bringing up the rear. As the guards turned the corner and lifted their machine guns, Stevie snapped the knob off the door and slammed it behind her.

_That'll take them a few minutes,_ she thought.

The door opened onto a catwalk - this one overlooking the factory floor, with a bridge to the opposite wall and, presumably, the exit. Behind Stevie came the thump of the guards trying to kick down the door, just as the noise of muffled shouts and gunfire came from outside. Dugan's team had engaged, which meant that Peggy's team would light up the factory any minute. It was time to get out.

"Ah, Captain America! How exciting," A voice called from the other side of the factory. German-accented, gloating and superior. "I am a great fan of your films."

The men around Stevie stiffened. The owner of the voice was a tall, lean man all in black leather - gloves, high boots and a long coat. He had a high forehead and a cruel, sneering mouth. At his side scuttled a man who could only be the figure Stevie had seen in the hallway - short and round, bald, with wire-rimmed glasses and a pinched, cringing face like some kind of rodent.

"Schmidt," growled Morita, which Stevie supposed made the shorter man Doctor Zola. Brooks and McDaniel were certainly looking at him with undisguised fear. Bucky, eyes fixed on the little man, looked like he might throw up.

"So Doctor Erskine managed it after all."

Schmidt swaggered up to the bridge and began to cross. Shield up, gun at her side, Stevie stepped onto the bridge as well, putting herself between this monster and her men. The two antagonists met in the middle, and Schmidt looked her up and down, lip curled into a derisive sneer.

"Not exactly an improvement, but still, impressive," he said. "In a way."

"You've got no idea," Stevie said defiantly. This man was the architect of so much death. How dare he stand there passing judgement on Doctor Erskine's work - a man he had as good as murdered himself? How dare he even mention Erskine's name?

"Haven't I?" Schmidt chuckled. "You see, no matter what Erskine told you _I_ was his greatest success."

He was close enough for Stevie to touch. Now was her chance - she could shoot him and put an end to everything. She raised her pistol, but Schmidt was faster - slapping her across the face before she could fire. The gun flew out of Stevie's hand and she staggered against the guardrail, head ringing. Behind her, the men cried out. She felt Schmidt step closer and raised her shield over her head just in time to block a strike like a hammer blow that would have caught her in the neck. The blow landed with a crack that shot all the way down Stevie's left side, and her shield split lengthwise down the middle.

Before Schmidt could recover from her unexpected block, Stevie knocked him off balance with a sweep of her cracked shield and gave him a hard jab right in the eye. He stumbled back from her, clutching his face, patting at the skin of his cheek like someone making sure a wig hadn't slipped. Under his hand, Stevie saw a line of red below one eye.

_He was clawing at his skin_, she remembered Peggy saying on their overnight drive long ago. _There was_ s_omething wet and red beneath._

At that moment, an explosion detonated directly below them - Peggy's team had succeeded. Stevie and Schmidt both fell to a crouch as the bridge lost a support beam somewhere and began to detach from the wall. Scrambling backward, Stevie barely made it onto the catwalk before the bridge collapsed.

"You are deluded, Fraulein!" Schmidt shouted over the shriek of tortured metal and overloading generators coming from below. He too had reached the catwalk safely, where he stood beside a terrified Zola.

"You smile and strut for the cameras, but you are afraid to admit you have left humanity behind," he smiled manically. The light of the burning equipment gave his face a demonic glow. "I embrace it proudly!"

At that he gripped the back of his neck, and, to Stevie's horror, peeled off his face like a rubber mask.

"What...the hell?" Morita breathed.

No nose, no ears - Schmidt's face, his real face, was like tight red leather stretched over an animated skull, in which a pair of blue eyes glittered madly.

_A red skull_, Stevie thought inanely. _It's a red skull._

"You don't have one of those, do you?" Bucky asked, voice choked with terror. But that wasn't possible. Bucky wasn't afraid of anything.

Another explosion rocked the factory. Zola pulled frantically at Schmidt's arm, and - although he didn't deign to look at the smaller man - Schmidt turned with a flourish and strode briskly out of the building, trying to make it look like he wasn't running for his life.

There was no other bridge to join the two catwalks - but a few yards along they found a beam running the width of the factory, part of a huge gantry, that the men could cross carefully one by one. Stevie insisted that the men go ahead of her - even Bucky, despite his objections - since she was the most able-bodied member of the group by far. When Bucky was about halfway across, and Stevie was about to begin crossing herself, the door behind her finally burst open, the three Hydra guards charging through onto the catwalk, guns raised.

"_Erschieẞen!_" The lead guard shouted, pointing at the men.

_Oh, no you don't_.

Stevie rushed the guards with a wordless cry. They shot at her, but not fast enough - Stevie had already ducked and rolled under the burst of gunfire. Coming up, she scooped her cracked shield under the lead guard's chest and her free arm under his leg, and heaved him over the guardrail - dropping him to the burning factory floor two stories down. She grabbed the second guard by the back of the head and slammed his face into the concrete wall with a sound like someone cracking open a lobster. As he fell, she drove the top of her broken shield up under the third guard's chin as hard as she could - so hard that it splintered completely apart. He dropped, twitching, and then was still.

_I don't want to kill anyone_, she had told Doctor Erskine. She had just killed three people without even breaking a sweat.

_They would have shot me, and Bucky, and the rest_, she thought. Then, _I should take the guns - we'll definitely need those_.

She had exchanged her splintered shield for the pair of machine guns and was running down the catwalk when the gantry, weakened by the fires and detonations below, groaned like a dying thing and fell, leaving her staring at Bucky across the width of the factory. She'd have to go back through the prison to get out, braving who knows how many guards.

"Just go!" She shouted to the men on the other side. "Get out of here!"

Morita and the others hesitated, but not Bucky.

"No!" He shouted, as if he could buoy her over the gap with the power of his words. "Not without you!"

Even across the factory she could see his eyes fixed on hers, body rigid, stubborn determination in every line. There were at least fifty feet between him and Stevie; could she jump that far? Might as well try, or he'd stay here and let the building burn down around his ears, the idiot. Stevie took a deep breath and back up to give herself a running start.

_Here goes nothing_, she thought.

One, two, three steps - and she launched herself into the air, pushing off the guardrail with a powerful leap. She soared in a way that would have been exhilarating if it weren't so terrifying - pinwheeling her arms and legs as if would help her push herself through the air. A ball of fire bloomed ahead of her, and she crossed her arms over her face, shutting her eyes tight. She felt the blast of heat, the end of her braid singing off, and then she was crashing into someone, rolling on hard metal

"Ouch," Bucky said. She had landed half on top of him. "You got really heavy, Stevie."

"Is that any way to talk to a lady?" she said, and, pulling him to his feet, dragged him out of the factory behind Morita and the rest, before the whole catwalk came crashing down behind them.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>**More minor plot changes in this chapter - to fix my pet peeves, mainly. :-)**

**Language notes:**

**You can probably guess these from context, but here they are, anyway. **

_Wer ist da? - _Who's there?

_Ist jemand hier? -_ Is someone there?

_Erschieẞen! -_ Shoot them!

**If I got anything wrong, I apologize to all speakers of German!**


End file.
